LIBRARYOF CONGRESS. 

Simp %ojrig|i f* 



Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LOTZE'S 

Outlines of Philosophy 
ii 

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 







OUTLINES 


OF THE 





PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 




DICTATED PORTIONS 

OF THE 

V 

LECTURES OF HERMANN LOTZE 



TRANSLATION EDITED BY 

GEORGE T. LADD 
i 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALE COLLEGE 



, I 



BOSTON 

GINN, HEATH, & CO. 

1885 






<3 X 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by 

GEORGE T. LADD, 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



J. S. Cushing & Co., Printers, 115 High Street, Boston. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



This translation of Lotze's ' Outlines of the 
Philosophy of Religion ' is made from the German 
of the second edition, for the revision of which, 
as well as for that of the first German edition, 
Professor Rehnisch of Gottingen is responsible. 
In preference to the first edition, the second was 
selected, because it seems to be at once more 
compact (if that were possible) and more compre- 
hensive. It is composed of the dictated portions 
of the Lectures given in the Summer-Semester of 
1875 and the Winter-Semester of 1878-79. The 
first eight chapters belong to the earlier date ; 
and, in fact, the course of 1875 closed with them. 
It was not until the year 1878 that Lotze added 
to this course the instruction on Religion and Mo- 
rality (Chapter IX.) and on Dogmas and Confessions 
(Chapter X.). 

In choosing this volume for the second place in 
the series of translations of these Outlines, I have 
been guided to a considerable extent by my own 
convenience as a teacher. It will be found to be 
very closely connected with, and indeed founded 
upon, the conclusions already made accessible in 



VI EDITOR S PREFACE. 

the translation of the 'Outlines of Metaphysic.' 
The Philosophy of Religion is, of course, primarily 
a speculative or theoretical treatment of the proofs 
for the Being of God, of his Attributes, and of 
his Relations to the World of matter and of finite 
spirits. But Lotze's metaphysical thinking leads 
him to the conclusion that the source and centre 
and sum of all that Reality with which it is the 
business of Metaphysic to deal, is the Personal 
Absolute whom — to use the language of Tren- 
delenburg — "faith calls God." The Philosophy 
of Religion must therefore first derive from Meta- 
physic the results of a critical treatment of those 
assumptions concerning all that is Real, which 
enter into all experience ; it must afterwards dis- 
cuss these same assumptions in that expanded 
form which is the result of taking into the ac- 
count the content of a further special experience 
of an aesthetic, ethical, and definitively religious 
kind. Readers who have not already made them- 
selves somewhat familiar with the author's views 
on metaphysical questions, should, in studying this 
volume, recur constantly to the ' Outlines of Meta- 
physic,' or to the larger volume on Metaphysic in 
his ' System of Philosophy.' 

It is my earnest hope that a large number of 
those whose work it is to teach religion will make 



EDITOR S PREFACE. Vll 

a somewhat careful study of this brief philosophi- 
cal treatise. It seems to me admirably adapted 
for an exercise in that fundamental thinking on 
the most important of subjects presented to the 
human reason, which no one can safely despise, 
and which few are in a position wisely to neglect. 
It is surely when applied to such subjects, if at 
all, that Philosophy may make good her claim to 
the ancient title which ascribed to her something 
of the ' divine.' 

It is scarcely necessary for me to repeat what 
was said in the Preface to the ' Outlines of Meta- 
physic ' ; namely, that my office is solely that of 
an interpreter, and not at all that of a critic or 
judge, — favorable or unfavorable to any views of 
the author. One remark, however, may properly 
be added, simply with a view to guard those 
readers who are not familiar with the writings of 
Lotze, against impressions that might lead to mis- 
understanding him. This entire treatise is avow- 
edly designed to inquire "how much of the con- 
tent of religion may be discovered, proved, or at 
least confirmed, agreeably to reason " (see p. 2). 
It is an effort to treat of " Religion within the 
limits of mere reason." But it is also avowedly 
very far from that "barren rationalism" which 
overlooks the ' aesthetic ' (in the widest sense) 



Vlll EDITOR S PREFACE. 

elements of human nature (p. 6 f.) ; it makes con- 
stant reference to, and attempts to afford satis- 
faction for, our indestructible religious needs. Par- 
ticularly in the last two chapters, therefore, it 
should be remembered, that what may be said to 
be, * speculatively ' considered, either determinable 
or unknowable, is by no means necessarily the 
same when considered from the point of view 
occupied by the investigator of the specific truths 
of Biblical revelation. In other words, a large 
amount of speculative agnosticism is not incom- 
patible with a firm conviction as to the truthful- 
ness of the system of doctrines called Scriptural, 
and scientifically formulated by dogmatics. 

The first translation of this volume, with the 
exception of Chapters II. to IV., was made by 
L. O. Brastow, D.D. : the editor is responsible for 
the translation of those three chapters and for 
the revision of the whole. The nature of both 
the subject and its treatment has made it pos- 
sible to present this one of the series, with the 
exception of certain distinctively metaphysical por- 
tions, in a form more easily intelligible to most 
readers than was possible in the case of the 
' Outlines of Metaphysic.' 

GEORGE T. LADD. 

New Haven, January, 1885. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction i 

Chapter I. — The Proofs for the Existence of God . 8 
II. — More precise Determinations of the Abso- 
lute 35 

III. — The Metaphysical Attributes of God . 45 

IV. — Of the Personality of the Absolute . 55 
V. — Of the Conception of Creation ... 70 

VI. — Of Preservation 81 

VII. — Of Government ...... 95 

VIII. — Of the Conception of the World-Aim . 114 
IX. — Religion and Morality . . . .129 

X. — Dogmas and Confessions . . . 143 



INTRODUCTION. 



§ 1. If religion were a normal product of the 
human reason alone, then philosophy would be 
the sole legitimate organ for determining and 
interpreting its content. 

If, on the contrary, it sprung from revelation, 
then reason alone would not be able, it is true, 
to have discovered it ; but after it were in exist- 
ence, it would still be necessary to show that its 
content is the adequate fulfilment for those re- 
ligious needs which -our reason is compelled to cher- 
ish, but would not be able of itself to satisfy. Even 
in this case, therefore, philosophy would have a 
work to accomplish by way of such authenticating. 
The assertion that the content of religion is a 
'mystery' is not convincing. There can be many 
facts of religion of such sort that the possibility 
of their coming to pass may not admit of rational 
apprehension ; and yet we should not without ex- 
ception take offence at this. But a ' mystery,' 
the significance of which were not at least sus- 
ceptible of definition, would be a mere curiosity 
devoid of all connection with our religious needs, 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



and, on this account, an unworthy object of reve- 
lation. 

Finally, if religion were a morbid product of the 
human spirit, philosophy, even in that case, would 
find occupation. It would have to investigate psy- 
chologically and historically the conditions of the 
origin of this delusion, as well as the conditions 
of avoiding it in the future. 

The principal object of the following reflections 
is connected with the first point of view above 
suggested : that is, we seek to ascertain how much 
of the content of religion may be discovered, 
proved, or at least confirmed, agreeably to reason. 
The two other points of view we subordinate to 
this. 

§ 2. It is customary to demand faith in contrast 
with knowledge as the proper organ for the truths 
of religion. Such an assertion finds its most exact 
expression in the intimation that, in fact, even 
scientific cognition always rests ultimately upon 
' faith ' ; that is to say, upon an immediate act of 
trust in certain absolutely simple and self-evident 
truths, which are neither in need of any proof, nor 
capable of it. 

An important distinction is overlooked in the 
above-mentioned view. All such ultimate, self- 



THE PROPOSITIONS OF FAITH. 



evident propositions, upon which our knowledge is 
founded, are general judgments, which do not tell 
us that anything whatever is or takes place, but 
which only declare what would exist or would have 
to take place, in case definite conditions occur ; or 
— more concisely — they all merely express certain 
general rules, which we are obliged to follow in the 
combination of the content of our ideas. On the 
contrary, those propositions upon which the most 
special interest of religion depends, — for example, 
that God is, that He has created the world, that 
the soul survives death, etc., — are all of them 
declarative judgments, which assert a definite, par- 
ticular fact. With respect to the before-mentioned 
general propositions, it may be understood that 
they are capable of being objects of our imme- 
diate insight or evidence ; for they are nothing but 
expressions of the forms of activity, in which our 
reason according to its own nature must be exer- 
cised. On the other hand, these declarative propo- 
sitions of faith, which assert a fact with respect to 
the ordering of the world that is foreign to our 
own nature, cannot with equal legitimacy be ie- 
garded as a natural or innate endowment of our 
spirit, but are in some sort the results of culture. 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



§ 3. It would be better to have undertaken a 
comparison of religious truth and scientific cog- 
nition different from the foregoing. No cognition 
consists merely of those general propositions of 
which we have made mention ; but every cognition 
originates by means of the application of these prop- 
ositions to a content which only experience can fur- 
nish ; more concisely, it is an elaboration of given 
perceptions. Now it might be asserted that it is not 
the external world exclusively which furnishes these 
necessary data by influence on our senses. Rather 
is it quite as admissible to think of a divine or 
supersensible influence upon our interior being, by 
means of which ' intuitions ' of another species fall 
to our lot, such as the senses can never supply, 
and such as constitute just that religious cognition 
which obtrudes itself upon us with immediate cer- 
tainty. 

It is to be said in reply to the foregoing claim 
that, although the aforesaid divine influences are 
willingly conceded, still, according to the analogy 
of the ' sense-impressions ' which are brought into 
comparison with them, they can consist imme- 
diately in nothing but a certain mode of our affec- 
tion, or of our experience, or of our feeling. Now, 
just as a sense-impression, — for example, a color 
or a tone, — is after all no ' cognition ' whatever ; 



ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 



but such a cognition originates only by comparing 
one impression with others, and by noticing the 
relations which occur between them, just so would 
those supersensible impressions consist immediately 
in mere feelings, moods, or movements of our own 
mind; but they would still represent in this form 
no truth of religion. The rather would such a 
truth, as admits of being expressed in a definite 
communicable proposition, originate only through 
the agency of an elaboration in thought of those 
'inner experiences' which go back to the 'grounds' 
of these states of the mind. 

§ 4. The only remnant of any useful result from 
this opposition of science to faith is, therefore, the 
conviction that the whole of our knowledge certainly 
does not originate from external experience, which 
is mediated for us by the senses ; but that there are 
also inner states which are available as data for 
the acquisition of truth. The finishing of the 
structure of religion depends, not exclusively but 
chiefly, upon these latter data ; and of such inner 
states there may be distinguished three groups : — 

(i) The personal feelings of fear, of absolute 
dependence on unknown powers, which belong to 
the most effective, but also to the most crude of 
the fundamental impulses that urge the mind to 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



seek consolation in a non -empirical view of the 
world. 

(2) Then there are the much nobler and just as 
truly effective aesthetic feelings that yield them- 
selves admiringly to the beautiful which they dis- 
cover in the world, and by means of it are incited 
to form a picture of an ideal world. This they 
do without any egoistic interest in the consolation 
desired ; but rather with the sure conviction that 
what is so fair and full of significance cannot be 
an accidental product of that which is without 
significance, but must be either the very Princi- 
ple of the world or closely related to its creative 
principle. 

(3) Finally, there are the ethical feelings, which, 
without being deducible from ' mere experience,' 
necessitate the attempt to conceive of a construc- 
tion of the world in which this fact of the moral 
obligation of the will to a definite form of action 
finds an intelligible and rational place. 

If now we conceive of the truth of religion as 
developed from all these data by means of our 
reflection, then we certainly get at what might be 
designated as " Religion within the limits of mere 
reason," but still not at that which has been so 
called. For, in most attempts of this kind, the 
great and weighty influence of the aforesaid aes- 



CAUSES OF BARREN RATIONALISM. 



thetic elements is especially overlooked, and, there- 
by, a very barren rationalism takes the place of that 
which the whole reason, acting in all directions, 
would be able to produce. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 

§ 5. The different attempts of reason to attain to 
certainty concerning the Supersensible, by starting 
from all the above-mentioned points of departure, 
are too manifold for direct statement. As often, 
however, as science has undertaken to give an 
account of its profits, it has done this in a doctrine 
of the " Proofs for the existence of God." Accord- 
ingly we also now present these proofs with the 
design to show how each one of them adopts its 
own special method for discovering a portion of 
the supersensible truth ; and with the brief pre- 
liminary remark that these proofs naturally cannot, 
properly speaking, demonstrate the existence of God 
as necessary, — that is, as dependent on something 
else, — but that they are all able merely to demon- 
strate our assumption of this existence as a logi- 
cally necessary consequence of the given facts of 
the world. 

§ 6. The ontological argument, as ordinarily ap- 
prehended, maintains that, while the conception of 
other beings does not include their existence, the 



THE MOST PERFECT BEING. 



conception of the most perfect Being of all does 
include it ; and that this being would in fact con- 
tradict its own conception, if the one perfection 
— to wit, existence itself — did not belong to it. 

The logical error of this argument is sufficiently 
well known. Not merely the conception of the 
most perfect Being, but indeed that of every living 
or active being (as, for example, the conception of 
an animal), includes existence also as necessary to 
be added in thought for defining it ; and without 
this all the rest of its predicates {e.g., sensation, 
motion, propagation, etc.) would be quite unthink- 
able. But with respect to no one of these concep- 
tions, does it follow from the necessity of adding 
in thought this mark (of existence), that after this 
the total content of the conception thus fully 
thought has validity in the nature of reality also, 
and that it may not be a merely thinkable combi- 
nation of our imagination. 

But although logically this attempt at proof is 
quite invalid, it is nevertheless of interest in other 
respects. For that which induces it to regard 
existence as a necessary attribute of the total 
content of the conception of the most perfect 
Being, is not, as it is in the case of the other 
conception (that of the animal), the mere circum- 
stance that the rest of the predicates would admit 



10 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

of formal attachment to what is existent only, and 
not to what is non-existent. This is obviously 
rather a case where an altogether immediate con- 
viction breaks through into consciousness ; to wit, 
the conviction that the totality of all that has 
value — all that is perfect, fair, and good — can- 
not possibly be homeless in the world or in the 
realm of actuality, but has the very best claim to 
be regarded by us as imperishable reality. This 
assurance, which properly has no need of proof, 
has sought to formulate itself, after a scholastic 
fashion, in the above-mentioned awkward argument. 

§ 7. The cosmological argument begins in an ap- 
prehension of frequent occurrence, yet withal wholly 
incorrect ; namely, that the existence of each indi- 
vidual Thing and of the world in general is contin- 
gent, and therefore presupposes not a contingent 
but a necessary Being. At this point, the particular 
conceptions which are wrongly attached to this 
thought, must be first subjected to a definition. 

The ordinary use of language is not at all ac- 
quainted with the philosophic significance of the 
word ' contingent,' according to which it is applicable 
to every existing thing whose non-existence in gen- 
eral would be thinkable without contradiction, and 
whose conception or whose nature accordingly offers 



IDEA OF THE ' CONTINGENT. I I 

no resistance to the cessation of its own existence. 
Rather does the common usage in the first instance 
merely contrast the 'contingent' with the designed, 
and understands by it all those secondary effects 
which, without being themselves designed, originate 
from action of ours that is designed. This happens 
because our actions themselves are for the most part 
capable of accomplishment only by means of some 
change in the objects of the external world ; these 
objects, however, because of those relations inde- 
pendent of ourselves in which they stand to each 
other, cannot be changed by us without propagating 
still further in various directions the impressions 
they have received. 

We speak, furthermore, of ' contingent ' events, 
when we have directed our attention to a general 
law of nature and when, in its application to a 
single case, processes occur which do not follow 
from the law and from the circumstances necessary 
for its application, but only from the accessory cir- 
cumstances that are foreign to the law. Even 
such a 'contingent,' as well as the preceding, is, 
wherever it occurs, necessary and inevitable, and is 
constantly conditioned by its own adequate reasons ; 
only these reasons do not reside in the design nor 
in the law. 

Finally, we also call such facts 'contingent' as 



12 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

are assumed by us not to be predestinated in such 
a plan of the world's course as we have rightly 
or wrongly presupposed, but only to originate inci- 
dentally through the mechanism of those efficient 
agencies which are summoned for the accomplish- 
ment of that plan. 

And with the one just mentioned is connected the 
still broader use of the word, according to which it 
becomes a mere determination of value, and desig- 
nates that whose nature and content seem to de- 
serve existence neither on account of its own value 
nor by connection with other values ; although it, 
nevertheless, is in possession of such existence. In 
this sense, the ' contingent ' is simply the matter 
of fact, whose being does not permit either of deri- 
vation from an effectuating condition, or of justifi- 
cation by its own value. 

§ 8. The other conception, namely, that of the 
'necessary,' is, in the only meaning of it which is 
quite clear to us, completely identical with that of 
the ' conditioned.' That only 'is' necessary, the ac- 
tuality of which cannot be conceived of as lacking, 
whenever a definite presupposed condition actually 
takes place. 

But it is very easy to understand whence comes 
the wish to place in opposition to this " condi- 



IDEA OF THE 'NECESSARY. 1 3 

tioned necessary " another of a higher sort. For a 
given c, which must of course exist in case a deter- 
minate b exists, is ' necessary ' only in the sense of 
its being forced. By means of its own nature 
merely, and without the aid of b, this c would not 
exist. The ' necessary ' in that higher sense which 
is sought, would therefore be such an one as is not 
dependent on anything else for its existence, and 
consequently is not conditioned. 

But it is entirely incorrect to persist in designat- 
ing such an unconditioned as is sought for, by the 
predicate 'necessary.' It must rather be called 
the absolute matter of fact, which exists for the 
reason merely that it does exist ; which does not 
need for its existence any extraneous condition ; 
but which, for precisely this reason, can only be an 
actual and never a necessary existence. 

§ 9. According to the analysis made above, the 
thoughts of the cosmological argument do not co- 
here well. From the so-called 'contingent,' — i.e. 
from that which is conditioned by something else 
external to it, and in just this respect must be 
called likewise necessary, — it is certainly possible 
to ascend to the Unconditioned, whose existence 
is dependent on nothing else ; but for this very 
reason such an unconditioned is not 'necessary,' 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

but merely matter of fact or actual. The desire to 
find something, which by means of its own nature, 
made its own existence necessary, is intrinsically 
beyond the possibility of realization, — as we saw it 
to be in the case of the ontological argument ; and 
to this cause was due also the failure of the thought 
that the Unconditioned which is sought is to be 
found in a most perfect Being. To that merely 
actual (not necessary) unconditioned existence, the 
smallest, meanest, and most insignificant thing has 
just as good a claim as the most perfect ; and that 
precisely for the reason that it is an unconditioned 
existence, and therefore is dependent on no reasons 
of any kind. 

In another direction also the cosmological argu- 
ment goes farther than its premises permit. It was 
legitimate to seek an Unconditioned for the Condi- 
tioned in the world ; but it is an altogether arbi- 
trary leap to assume that this Unconditioned must 
be One ; and, furthermore, that it can be conceived 
of only in the form of a single real Being. It 
is possible that this assumption may be justified 
subsequently; but just at this point the other as- 
sumption, to which the natural sciences have come 
through their need of interpreting the world, obvi- 
ously lies much nearer at hand. We refer to the 
assumption of a very great multiplicity of uncon- 



A SINGLE UNCONDITIONED BEING. 1 5 

ditionally existing elements, which are independent 
of each other, and are only subject to a general 
sphere of laws in accordance with which the mani- 
fold phenomena proceed from their changeable posi- 
tions with respect to each other. 

One more consideration of a logical character 
must first qualify this view. It is that we get no 
insight as to how a single unconditioned being, 
even though it were in existence, would be able to 
condition anything else, and therefore serve as the 
desired initial member in the conditioned series of 
the world's events. A conclusion or a consequence 
never follows except from the concurrence of two 
premises, and not from one premise alone. To the 
one unconditioned Being, therefore, if aught is to 
result from it, there would always have to be added 
again other accessory circumstances, which do not 
emanate from it, but which are just as much uncon- 
ditioned : the world therefore would not be depend- 
ent upon one, but upon many unconditioned begin 
nings. 

§ 10. The teleological argument proposes to make 
that empirical conformity to an end, which appears 
in the world, the point of departure for an inference 
with respect to a single designing and creative rea- 
son, as the supreme cause of the world. 



l6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

Let us in the first place investigate the con- 
ception of that which is ' conformable to an end,' 
as such. This conception is entirely free from 
ambiguity only when we take our start from the 
conscious purposes of our own will, which are 
fixed upon a determinate result as their end. In 
that case, what is ' conformable to an end ' is the 
selection or combination of means, which, by their 
legitimate action, bring about the realization of the 
aforesaid end. To call those means themselves 
' conformable to an end ' is, properly speaking, not 
correct. They are themselves merely serviceable : 
that is to say, their nature is in itself calculated 
for no determinate end whatever, such as we might 
set for ourselves ; but it is merely of such sort 
that a useful application of it to our ends be- 
comes possible for us. 

Now that this ' serviceableness ' or ' accidental 
conformity ' of things in the world to an end, is 
of very frequent occurrence, proves nothing further. 
For when once there exist Things with properties 
of their own and with established methods of ac- 
tion, it is a matter of course that some of our 
designs (which themselves, in the last analysis, 
always amount to the same as some alteration 
in the states of Things) may be accomplished by 
means of the activity to which other Things lay 



IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END. \J 

claim. More than this, however, does not in reality 
take place. The nature of Things is not so emi- 
nently useful, that it would be sufficient for the ac- 
complishment even of all authorized designs ; and it 
is not so absolutely useful that it might not serve 
just as well for the frustration of that which is 
rational, and for the production of that which is 
unauthorized. 

§ 11. In contrast with the aforesaid utility, an 
"immanent conformity to an end" is spoken of, 
which appears primarily in the individual organisms 
that have no other end beyond their own existence, 
but in each one of which all parts are recipro- 
cally related as end and means. Such conformity 
to an end is then transferred from these individ- 
ual organisms to the Universe, as to a "great or- 
ganism." 

Now we are accustomed to assert that these com- 
posite forms cannot possibly be mere products of 
the blind co-operation of many elements, without the 
unity of one controlling design. Such a conclusion 
is decidedly false. Even supposing a conscious de- 
sign to be demonstrably at work, still the realiza- 
tion of its end is always dependent on the fact, that 
every particle of this end is likewise the inevita- 
ble and undesignedly necessary product of the co- 



1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

operation of the means summoned to aid. The 
end would not be possible at all if it were impossi- 
ble in accordance with the laws of the mechanism 
which these means follow ; and it would not be 
actual, if it were not also necessary in accordance 
with these laws, at the very instant when the afore- 
said means are applied. 

But still further : It is supposed that at least the 
bringing together of the means themselves, into 
those positions in which they are of necessity com- 
pelled to realize the end, is impossible without a 
controlling design. But again it may be answered : 
Even where this design actually exists, it is unable 
to bring the usable means into those useful posi- 
tions by its own mere volition ; on the contrary, it is 
able to accomplish this only by summoning physical 
agencies and forces of a sort similar to the means 
themselves. Therefore the state attained at any 
given instant, when the end is accomplished, must 
be regarded as the necessary resultant of the co- 
operation of these forces at the preceding instant ; 
and instead of an intelligence which might ex- 
plain the state of the case belonging to this pre- 
ceding instant, there may always be substituted a 
combination of other blind elements and forces 
which were compelled to have precisely the same 
result. 



IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END. 



To state the same thing briefly : The completely 
automatic blind origin even of the system most 
conformable to an end, is never impossible ; it is 
only improbable. And now the question comes, 
what is meant by this latter expression ? 

§ 12. If we take for granted, that an indefinite 
multitude of different elements act upon one an- 
other entirely in accordance with mechanical laws, 
and that they were aboriginally in reciprocal mo- 
tions which were not regulated by any design, then 
there might issue from such conditions innumera- 
ble possible consequences. The forms possessed of 
an immanent conformity to an end would represent 
only a very insignificant number among these pos- 
sible consequences ; and therefore they would have 
very little probability of coming into existence. But 
to reason back from this to a design proposing 
an end, would be valid only in case the forms con- 
formable to the end alone appeared in the world ; 
and in case those other results that are without 
an end, or in contradiction to an end, were neither 
present in experience, nor needed to be assumed 
even as having existed in the past. 

Neither of the above-mentioned suppositions cor- 
responds with the facts. In our actual observation 
there occur innumerable cases of disease and of the 



20 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

failure of rational life-ends; — to say nothing what- 
ever of the very many facts and occurrences which, 
so far as our discernment extends, are at least with- 
out an end, even if they disturb no other end. But 
with reference to the past we are at liberty to as- 
sume, that at first an innumerable multitude of in- 
harmonious forms, intrinsically hostile to any end, 
actually emerged from the reciprocal impact of blind 
elements ; that these forms, however, were not able 
to maintain themselves in the course of nature, as 
against the constant assaults from without ; that, on 
the contrary, only those few held out, which had 
chanced to be the more fortunate ; that then these 
fortunate ones exerted more and more a determin- 
ing influence upon the rest ; and that thus gradu- 
ally it has come to pass, that nature runs its course, 
not indeed in complete perfection and conformity to 
an end, but after all to such an extent that there 
still remain but few disturbances or interferences 
by which the development and perpetuation of the 
structures that are conformable to an end, is en- 
dangered. In this way, therefore, it would not be 
unthinkable that an original chaos gradually shaped 
itself into a nature' that is arranged in conformity 
to ends. 



INTELLIGENT ELEMENTS OF REALITY. 21 

§ 13. Moreover, it is not necessary to stop with 
the altogether meagre assumptions which we have 
made. If it is once held to be conceivable that 
a single supreme intelligence may exert an influ- 
ence upon the reciprocal relations of the elements 
of the world, then similar intelligence may also be 
imagined as immediately active in all these indi- 
vidual elements themselves ; and, instead of con- 
ceiving them as controlled merely by blindly op- 
erative forces, they may be imagined as animated 
spiritual beings, who strive after certain states and 
offer resistance to certain other states. In such 
case there may be imagined the gradual origin of 
ever more perfect relations, from the reciprocal 
action of these elements, almost like the reciprocal 
action of a human society ; and that too without 
necessarily arriving at the assumption, to which we 
are here inclined, of a single, supreme, intelligent 
Being. Our reasoning issues rather in a sort of 
polytheistic or even pantheistic conception, and that 
too in quite tolerable agreement with experience. 

§ 14. Against what was said above it may still 
be objected, that the persistence, the power of self- 
maintenance, and the equipoise of the more for- 
tunate forms, which we previously admitted to have 
originated in the blind course of nature, are not 



22 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

identical with that conformity to an end, the ad- 
miration for which was our point of departure in 
the teleological argument. The aforesaid mere equi- 
poise, and the permanence that originates from it, 
might also belong of themselves to altogether pur- 
poseless forms ; that is to say, to forms whose entire 
existence would have absolutely no immediate value 
and no rational significance. Both these character- 
istics however we suppose we recognize in those 
structures conformable to an end, which we are here 
making our point of departure. 

There is a remainder of truth in the above-men- 
tioned view; but the thought does not prove what 
it was assumed to prove. To wit, so soon as we 
confine ourselves simply to admiration for an imma- 
nent conformity to an end, we are in fact scarcely 
ever able to demonstrate conclusively that the total 
result which is produced by it is actually anything 
of absolute value ; — a value which would have to 
be apprehended either as being generically its own 
end, or as being such an end as to admit of our 
understanding that it could have been devised only 
by a designing wisdom, and that it only, rather than 
one of its opposites, was worthy of this wisdom. 

We admire, for example, the stability of the plan- 
etary system ; we believe that only a Providence 
has been able to choose from among the innumer- 



MEANS AND END IN ORGANISM. 23 

able possible arrangements of its masses, precisely 
that one on which this stability depends. But it 
may be questioned whether after all this constant 
repetition of the same occurrences is, as a matter 
of course, a supreme end ; and whether it may not 
rather be a tedious arrangement ; so much so that 
there might conceivably have been innumerable 
arrangements, that never occur in the actual world, 
which the one succession of different developments 
of the heavenly bodies might have established, — 
something much more manifold, novel, and inter- 
esting. In plants, after they once exist, everything 
harmonizes as means and end. But what is the 
value of their entire existence ? Ends external to 
themselves, which they serve, are accomplished by 
them ; but they might possibly have been accom- 
plished by a shorter method. Their own growth 
and bloom is in the estimate of our understanding 
an entirely purposeless fact, in which nothing fur- 
ther actually appears than that equipoise which the ' 
mechanical course of nature is capable of produc- 
ing, and from which the conformity to an end here 
assumed should be quite essentially distinguished. 

The above-mentioned consideration may be ex- 
tended to the world of animals and men : so long 
as there are still among the latter so many com- 
plaints about unrealizable ideals, the thought that 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

much of the beauty we conceive has no existence 
will continue to nullify the conclusiveness of the 
teleological argument. 

§ 15. If we summarize our thoughts, there re- 
mains but one point of a positive character, and 
this is the conviction that there is in the world 
at all events a great deal of that which is beautiful 
and great and excellent, — admiration for which was 
the point of departure for this teleological argu- 
ment ; and that it is by no means possible to get rid 
of this argument by deducing all its examples from 
the undesigned reciprocal actions of innumerable 
elements, working in accordance with law. By such 
deduction we merely change the location of that 
which has value. We are necessitated then to as- 
sert of just that aforesaid original nature of the 
elements, and of their general laws of action, that 
they themselves from the very first include within 
themselves the ground capable of developing that 
which has value. 

But the course of thought given above has ut- 
terly failed as an argument for the existence of God. 
That Intelligence, of which we cannot be wholly 
rid, admits just as well of being apprehended as a 
property adhering imraanently to all Things ; or 
even, if one is pleased to seek it outside of Things, 



FATE OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 25 

as a multiplicity of spiritual beings or demons, who 
share with each other in the creation and control 
of the world. And each of these assumptions really 
harmonizes better with the immediate impression 
of experience than the hasty assumption of one 
only supreme wisdom, from which as their source 
the imperfections of the world, that in fact are 
manifest to us, are much more difficult to compre- 
hend. 

§ 16. The teleological argument was wrecked by 
the fact that it was unable, with sufficient certainty 
and to a sufficient extent, to prove empirically the 
empirical datum, which it assumed to make its point 
of departure, — namely, the world's conformity to 
an end. 

We attempt therefore to find our point of depart- 
ure in a simpler datum, which is not so doubtful, 
and which is quite as generally acknowledged. And 
we attempt to deduce from it, not exactly the 
existence of God, but a more modest conclusion, 
which shall serve us as a preliminary condition for 
that other conclusion. 

This datum is in substance the assumption that 
all the elements of the world, without exception, 
act upon each other, no matter whether adapted to 
an end or the reverse ; and therefore that each 



26 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

exerts influences upon the rest, or, in turn, receives 
influences from them. So far as our experience 
extends, it confirms this assumption. The objec- 
tion against it, that we know little of the past, and 
absolutely nothing of the future, and that even in 
the present perhaps individual elements do not 
stand in any relation of reciprocal action with each 
other, cannot refute the assumption. For this in- 
difference just mentioned between two elements — 
a and b — at the same time that each individual 
element stands in a relation of reciprocal action 
with many others, we should after all never be com- 
pelled to regard as a fact devoid of all principle, 
but as the necessary consequence of the same 'law/ 
in accordance with which a and h exercise the afore- 
said other reciprocal actions. And just so, if in 
the past or future these actions of the elements 
with respect to each other, were different from 
what they are now ; yet we should not regard 
even this as a fact independent of conditions, but 
as conditioned by some fixed law, which sooner or 
later would demand other actions with the same 
consistency with which it now demands the ones 
in question. 

If what was said above be not acknowledged, but 
if it were maintained rather that the elements of the 
world, without any cause, have sometimes acted upon 



THE ORIGINAL ELEMENTS RELATED. 2J 

each other, in general, and at other times not at 
all, at one time thus and at another time otherwise ; 
then the very basis for every investigation would 
be abolished. Such a world would furnish no data 
whatever for any conclusion, even with respect to 
an event that is to be anticipated within its own 
limits merely, still less for any conclusion with re- 
spect to anything external to itself, which might be 
regarded, as in any sense, its ground, its cause, its 
end, or its principle. 

§ 17. From the foregoing it follows now that 
the individual elements, of which the world is com- 
posed, are by no means able to exist as they will ; 
and that therefore a course of the world cannot 
be deduced, from real beings, which are from the 
beginning wholly without relation to each other. 

If, for example, all things were as incomparable 
with each other or as disparate as perhaps ' red ' 
or ' sweet ' (and nothing would prevent the making 
of such an assumption, in case each real being is 
completely independent, and has to pay no regard 
whatever to all the others), it is evident that no 
definite result could possibly spring from any rela- 
tion between two such beings (supposing one to be 
at all able to conceive of such a ' relation ') with 
any more right than any other could claim. For, 



28 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

in order that the result m must originate from a 
and b, while the same result m could not originate 
from a and c, it is necessary that there first exist 
between lb and c, not a complete incomparability, 
but a definite contrariety, or a difference of definite 
magnitude, — a thing which is not thinkable, unless 
fa and c are comparable. 

The further development of these considerations 
would show then, that this comparability must ob- 
tain, not merely between fa and c, but between all 
the real elements of the world ; and this in such 
manner, that these elements constitute collectively, 
not members of a single series, indeed, but rather 
members of a system of series intersecting each 
other ; and also in such manner that it should be 
possible for one to proceed from the nature of each 
individual element to the nature of every other, by 
a definite number of steps, taken within this net- 
work of system. Such a state of the case lies, as 
a silent assumption, just as if it were utterly im- 
possible to be otherwise, at the foundation of our 
entire view of the world ; and, on this account, the 
importance of this wonderful circumstance is com- 
monly overlooked. 

§ 18. It would be over-rash to infer from this, 
without further question, a common origin for all 



ALL ELEMENTS ARE COMPARABLE. 29 

these elements. For although this comparableness 
of theirs seems like a single select case from among 
many in contrast with the empty possibilities which 
we might be able to imagine (as, for example, that 
'all the elements were as totally different as ' red/ 
'sweet,' or 'warm'), nevertheless there is appli- 
cable to the case no calculation of probabilities, in 
accordance with which it would be impossible to 
accept the existence of this particular case as a 
mere matter of fact independently of a common 
cause for all the elements. 

On the contrary, a different conclusion is justi- 
fied. It is not enough that the natures of Things 
are homogeneous, unless the same natures stand 
in some other connection besides. From such ho- 
mogeneity it would barely follow what result (c) 
must originate from the meeting of two beings a 
and h, — taking it for granted that there were in 
general some reason why something new must 
originate, and why the mere existence of a and 1> 
and their conjunction could not have been enough. 
Or, as expressed in other words : The most that fol- 
lows from the comparable natures a and b concerns 
the result which they are necessitated to produce, 
or the manner in which they are necessitated to 
act upon one another ; but it does not follow that 
they must produce anything whatever, or that they 
must act at all upon each other. 



30 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

In case we draw a conclusion c from two premises 
a and b, the meaning is as follows : In the unity 
of our thinking ego, the two thoughts a and b can- 
not appear as states of this ego without the thought 
c being attached to them, — and this just on account 
of the nature of this one subject. If, on the other 
hand, the thought a were conceived by one person, 
and the thought b by another, then the thought c 
would not originate as a consequence in either one 
of the two, although c, and c alone, would be the 
necessary result of a and b provided they came to- 
gether at all. The case is exactly so with Things. 
From the mere fact that one Thing a exists, and 
another b exists, c does not by any means follow, 
of course ; and this, although c would be the only 
effect which could follow, provided a and b acted 
upon each other. We must investigate the ques- 
tion what, in such a case, would correspond to 
that identity of the thinking subject by means of 
which the thoughts a and b alone are necessitated 
to produce a result. 

§ 19. We derive from Metaphysic the conviction, 
that this fact of the reciprocal influence of two 
Things a and b is impossible, so long as both were 
conceived of as entirely self-sufficient and in such 
sort independent of each other, that a might exist 



THINGS AS MODES OF ONE BEING. 3 1 

and be what it is, even though b had no existence. 
It remains a completely insolvable contradiction, 
that a and b accommodate themselves to each other 
(that b, therefore, enters into a state p, as soon as 
a enters into the state a), if a and b have no con- 
cern with each other. 

We derive moreover from Metaphysic the further 
conviction, that all middle terms, which are inter- 
polated between a and b, such as the • transition ' 
of a 'substance,' of an 'influence,' or of a 'force,' 
are either essentially inconceivable ideas, or at any 
rate do not at all explain the action, but always 
leave unanswered the same question ; namely, how 
x after its transition from a to b can begin the 
production of a change in b, — that is to say, how 
x can act upon b, or how in general one Thing can 
act upon another. 

Finally, we derive the conviction that the afore- 
said inconceivableness can be removed only by the 
negation of the independence of individual Things : 
a and b cannot be absolutely different beings, but 
only modifications of one and the same Being M, 
which is in them all, in a, b, c, d, . . ., the truly 
Existent ; and which has indeed assumed different 
forms in all these different Things, but still re- 
mains indivisibly one and the same individual M. 

If, then, in the single Thing a there occurs a 



32 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

change a, this a is eo ipso, is of itself already be- 
sides a change of M, and has no need first to 
become such a change. If then we conceive the 
nature of M as always endeavoring to maintain its 
own identity, M will now produce within itself a 
second state p, which occurs as a compensation to 
a, and in connection with it forms again an expres- 
sion of the whole nature of M. 

It is not necessary, however, that this p should 
appear in our observation as a change of a, but it 
may appear as a change of the other individual 
Thing b. And, this would then be the procedure 
which we conceive as an "action of a upon 1>." 

§ 20. For the sake of elucidation the following 
remark must be added : What this one Being, or 
— according to the common expression — what 'the 
Absolute ' is, remains at first completely indeter- 
minate. From the fact of the reciprocal action of 
individual Things, the only conclusion at which we 
arrived was that of the necessary unity of this 
Absolute. What it is, is left for further determi- 
nation. 

Furthermore, in designating Things as " modifi- 
cations of the Absolute," it is to be acknowledged 
that such an expression contains no explanation 
whatever of the precise sort of unity which obtains 



THINGS AS MODES OF ONE BEING. 33 

between Things and the Absolute ; or of the sort 
of dependence in which they stand with reference 
to that Absolute. The expression has rather the 
distinct negative meaning which denies the self- 
dependence of individual Things. With something 
of like sort we are frequently compelled to be sat- 
isfied. We are very often obliged, for the purpose 
of removing a contradiction or of explaining an 
occurrence, to postulate a fact, with respect to 
which, however, we are never able to say how it 
were possible for it to exist, or to have been 
brought to pass; — and this, even in case it can 
be yet more accurately defined than the fact that 
is just now assumed by us. We postpone to a 
subsequent chapter whatever more there is to be 
said upon this point. 

Finally ; even the elasticity, or self-maintenance, 
that we attribute to the Absolute, is used in a 
preliminary way merely as a not unimaginable ex- 
pression to which different significations may be 
given. It is not necessary to conceive of the reac- 
tions of the Absolute against the changes that 
occur, as directed, in a merely mechanical way, to 
the preservation of the status quo ; instead of this, 
we might assume even an impulse of development 
in progress towards a definite goal ; and that this 
impulse, likewise, by means of any state a which 



34 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

had originated either elsewhere or in the prosecu- 
tion of this purposeful activity, would occasion, the 
production of a further state p, by which such pur- 
poseful activity would be propagated further. Such 
an assumption, made in a preliminary way, is a mat- 
ter of indifference. It is certain only that if there 
is to be any reciprocal action whatever of individual 
Things, there must be in the Absolute some such 
consistent sensibility as is necessitated to produce 
by means of a its consequence p, no matter whether 
it be for self-maintenance or for progress. 



CHAPTER II. 

MORE PRECISE DETERMINATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE. 

§ 21. It is not our present design to dissect 
logically the conception of an * Absolute,' and to lay 
down the conditions under which aught would be 
held to be the Absolute or acknowledged as such. 
As far as this is a matter of interest, it is too 
difficult for the present moment. Just now we are 
rather making the attempt to specify by name that 
which is by its own nature adapted to fulfil the 
conditions above alluded to ; and, of course, fulfil 
them in such a way that it can be recognized as 
the absolute Principle of that world which is given 
in experience as bare matter of fact. Not to stray 
too far abroad, we confine ourselves to the two 
contraries between which it has long been custom- 
ary to distribute the consistence of whatever is 
actual ; namely, Matter and Spirit. 

§ 22. The assumption that the common substance' 
of the world is only matter, and matter as endowed 
only with those properties which we in physical 
science attribute to every portion of the same, 



2)6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

has probably never been made in earnest by any 
one. 

Such an assumption would take upon itself the 
difficult problem of showing how, from these mere 
properties of space-filling, inertia, divisibility, and 
mobility, all the rest of the world, and therefore 
even its spiritual constituents, could be developed 
as a matter of course, — that is to say, as the mere 
consequences of such properties and without admix- 
ture of any other principle whatever. 

Now Psychology has compelled us to the convic- 
tion that the states of motion — which can only be 
considered as events that happen to masses of the 
kind referred to above — are, as a matter of fact, 
the occasions upon which there arise in us spiritual 
processes, such as sensations or feelings. But in 
what way these occasions bring after them these 
results so unlike themselves, is not only not a sub- 
ject of empirical knowledge, but it is even possible 
to see that we can never reach the point where it 
would be for us a matter of course that a mode 
of the motion of these masses, however wondrously 
intricate, would now have to cease to remain such, 
and would be necessitated to transmute itself into 
quite a different process, of sensation or of feeling. 
According to all the axioms of which we avail our- 
selves elsewhere in the mechanical consideration of 



SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL PROCESSES. 37 

nature, from motions alone nothing but a transfer- 
ence, new distribution, propagation or arrest, of 
motions can originate. A spiritual effect can be 
attached to them only indirectly ; to wit, by means 
of the action of the aforesaid physical processes on 
a subject which, in its own nature, possesses that 
capacity for the production of psychical processes in 
which the motions themselves are wanting. 

As here in the small, so also in the totality of 
the world, a Principle of barely material nature 
would be in no condition to produce from itself 
the world of spiritual processes. 

§ 23. Now although each of these two series of 
events, the spiritual and the physical processes, re- 
quires its own peculiar ' ground ' in reality, it is 
nevertheless not necessary that the 'ground' of 
the two be divided into two different species of 
reality, in such a manner that there may be mate- 
rial Things devoid of all spiritual susceptibility, and 
spirits devoid of all physical property and activity. 
The rather may we first examine the thought that 
both of these original properties are in fact insep- 
arably united in every existence ; and that, on ac- 
count of one of them, the Existent is able to appear 
as, and to pass for, matter ; while, on account of 
the other, contrariwise, it leads an inner life and 
develops spiritual states within itself. 



38 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

For the psychology of the individual being, this 
assumption, on closer inspection, is shown to be un- 
productive. For the consideration of the world as a 
whole it, at first, has more to recommend it ; and it 
forms the text of the spirited descriptions in which 
Pantheism glorifies the unresting life of the eter- 
nally One Substance, both corporal and spiritual, 
which in ceaseless vicissitude fashions its individual 
shapes, and lets them be absorbed again into itself. 

The more definite formulating of these thoughts, 
in the case of Spinoza and Schelling, arouses our 
scruples against them. When the former (Spinoza) 
ascribes to the Absolute innumerable kinds of doing 
and acting (' Attributes ') that admit of no compari- 
son with each other, — of which, to be sure, only 
two, namely Thought and Extension {cogitatio and 
extensio) are familiar to us men, — such manifold- 
ness obviates in some degree, at least for the 
imagination, the difficulty which lies in the sin- 
gular circumstance, that just those two attributes 
which are not reducible to each other are assumed 
to form the essence of all the Existent. To find, 
however, for both of these attributes a still ' higher 
common root,' from which both issued as mere con- 
sequences, but did not themselves constitute such 
root (so Schelling,) is a problem that surpasses all 
human power of comprehension. It is indeed pos- 



THE ABSOLUTE AS SPIRIT. 39 

sible to fashion the name of such a ' First Absolute,' 
which is neither real nor ideal, and yet is the ground 
of both. But it is not possible to discover any- 
thing in the entire world, of which it could be said 
that it belongs to this thing, by virtue of its own 
nature, to be esteemed as such a common root. 

Since, therefore, the goad of this Dualism cannot 
be got rid of, and a substance that is merely real 
and acts blindly does not suffice for explaining the 
world, we find herein one of the motives that lead 
us to the opposite attempt, — to the pure Spiritual- 
ism which undertakes to comprehend the spirit 
alone as truly existent, and all else as its product. 

§ 24. The above-mentioned views, on being carried 
out further, are wont by preference to invalidate yet 
more the spiritual element of the Absolute. Such 
views customarily announce this element as a rea- 
son that is 'per se unconscious ' ; that only in indi- 
vidual points of its extreme altitude, in individual 
spiritual beings, raises itself to consciousness. 

Such a form of conception as the foregoing ap- 
pears inadmissible. We have no right to strip off 
from the Reason, which we invariably first learn 
by experience to know as conscious, this predicate 
of consciousness, and then persuade ourselves that 
aught intelligible is left still remaining. Rather is 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

it true that only one definite thought admits of 
being connected with the expression, a reason act- 
ing unconsciously in the world ; to wit, the thought 
that blind forces act in the world, which are not in 
any respect reason, but which in fact act so that 
their results are the same as those which a reason 
acting in the world would have been compelled to 
desire. 

At this point the additional misfortune comes to 
view, that the aforesaid proposition does not ad- 
mit of being proved with reference to any kind of 
nature's action. For, in order to do this, it were 
necessary to show that the results of her action are 
the fulfilment of those absolute ends which reason 
would have been, not merely able to propose to itself, 
but compelled to propose as the ones justified in 
the highest degree. If, on the contrary, we appraise 
what is actually achieved in nature at a lower value, 
and assume that it could have been still better, but 
is not so, then we should be quite as much justified 
in speaking of an treason acting blindly in the 
world. 

But apart from this, it is clear according to what 
was said above, that a self-conscious reason could 
never originate as a final product from such powers ; 
rather should we have to be satisfied with uncon- 
sciousness throughout the entire world. 



IMPERSONAL SPIRIT IMPOSSIBLE. 41 

It is wrong also to appeal to the analogy of our 
own spirit, which, without conscious design, in- 
stinctively produces many of its rational works ; 
such, for example, as those of art. We admit 
the existence of such activities ; but we know 
of them in absolutely no other case than that of 
spirits whose nature it is to be self-conscious : 
moreover, they appear in this case as actions ac- 
companying or following excitations and states 
which were originally possible only in conscious- 
ness, but which in time vanish from consciousness 
by reciprocal inhibition. How, on the other hand, 
anything similar could take place in a subject, in 
whose nature no consciousness had ever preceded 
such activities, is not in the slightest degree com- 
prehensible. 

§ 25. In connection herewith, the same view is 
fond of speaking of an impersonal Spirit. 

This, too, is much easier to say than by it men- 
tally to represent anything. It is quite correct 
that, in our own spiritual life, we experience 
manifold states in which all attention to our own 
self, and all positing of that self over opposite to 
an external world, are completely gone ; and we 
so lose ourselves in the content of a sensation, 
an idea, a feeling, or an effort, that we (so to 



42 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

speak) are for a time nothing but this, as it were, 
self-apprehending content, and not a subject which 
had this content as an object of its consciousness 
and distinguished it from itself. 

But it is just as certain that we know such 
states only as occurrences in an otherwise per- 
sonal spirit. They merely prove that it is not 
necessary for the personal spirit at every moment 
to think of itself as different from the content 
which exactly fills out its consciousness. But they 
cannot prove that anything similar is possible 
without the personality, which, in such a case, 
does not indeed mentally represent itself, but 
none the less remains in fact the condition of 
the possibility of such a self-forgetfulness. For 
all the aforesaid sensations, ideas, or feelings, 
in which we thus lose ourselves, are after all 
never thinkable except as states of a definite, 
self -identical and separate spiritual subject ; and 
not the least consecutiveness, nor any coherency 
according to law between these different spiritual 
states, would be possible, unless the personal unity 
of the spirit, which is by no means apparent in 
them, were for all that the real ground which 
unites them with one another. 



IMPERSONAL SPIRIT IMPOSSIBLE. 43 

§ 26. It is further adduced in support of the 
above-mentioned view that even the 'personality' 
with which we have an acquaintance, — to wit, 
that of the human soul, — first originates in the 
course of its development. As originally given 
there exist, it is said, only common spiritual capa- 
cities which, by means of favorable circumstances, 
are aroused to expression in such manner that, 
from the combination of these expressions, a 
reflection directed toward self and a self-con- 
sciousness can also originate. 

Just so, it is claimed, the Absolute at first is 
impersonal Spirit. At this point views are di- 
vided : one makes the Absolute, just like the 
finite spirit, attain to a personality of its own ; 
the other makes it always remain of itself imper- 
sonal and only assume personal form in individual 
ones of its products, that is in finite spirits. 

The first view is for the present time a useless 
curiosity. For us it would hardly be of any 
value religiously, that the Absolute has attained 
to personality at the conclusion of its develop- 
ment. On the contrary, an account of the way 
in which this result is reached is demanded by 
no religious need, but at the very most only by 
speculative curiosity. 

The other view would be compelled to assert 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

that the Absolute, of itself unconscious and imper- 
sonal, produces even in its blind development the 
favoring conditions under which its own products, 
the finite spirits, developed the personality denied 
to itself. This is likewise an opinion that answers 
to no religious need ; and least of all to the neces- 
sity of making intelligible from a single real prin- 
ciple, not merely the external course of the world, 
but also its moral order, and the fact that it fur- 
nishes us with obligatory ideals of the Good and 
the Holy. 

In this way it is made apparent that very pow- 
erful motives impel the religious spirit, at last, 
straight to the conception of a personal God, and 
do not permit it to shrink back from the many 
difficulties that lie in this conception also. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

§ 27. We abandon the previous train of thought 
and now consider the conception of God as, on 
the basis of the incentives depicted in the last 
chapter, by means of a long spiritual labor of the 
centuries and essentially harmonious, it lies before 
us perfected in the monotheistic religions. We 
consider, first, the formal or metaphysical deter- 
minations. 

That God is but One, and that polytheism is 
therefore excluded, we pass with a bare allusion. 
Many Gods, if each lived independent in his own 
world, would be a useless and adventurous 
thought ; but if they met each other with their 
activity in one and the same world, then they 
would necessarily be finite beings, which acted 
on each other and suffered effects from each 
other in accordance with certain laws appointed 
over them. 

The religious nature does not understand the 
1 Unity of God ' in the aforesaid numerical mean- 
ing. It does not intend to affirm that God is 
in fact only one, while by way of imagination 



46 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

there might possibly be beside him still others 
of his own kind. It means rather that God is 
an only God ; that is to say, there is no superior 
general concept of a God, of such sort that all 
the predicates which might belong to the actual 
God as an example of this concept of species, 
would ensue from it just as much conditioned and 
prescribed as in the case of every finite creature, 
from whose concept of species ensues the limit 
within which its properties and their reciprocal 
combination can vary. 

This absolute independence of the Highest Prin- 
ciple, which does not admit of its being in any 
way subordinated to one still higher, — as though 
it were effect or even mere example of the latter, 
— will appear to us subsequently in the different 
consequences which are to be drawn from it, as 
one of the most important of the formal deter- 
minations. 

§ 28. To a second formal predicate, that of 
Unchangeableness, the religious feeling does not 
attach the same meaning as seems to accord with 
this title. 

Perfectly unchangeable substances would, of 
course, be philosophically useless assumptions even 
for the explanation of nature ; but still, if one 



THE PREDICATE OF OMNIPRESENCE. 47 

chooses to avoid certain questions as to first prin- 
ciples, such substances always admit of being em- 
ployed for the intermediate explanation of processes 
one from the other. A God, on the contrary, who 
should be without changeable inner states forever 
perfectly self-identical, would answer to no religious 
need. 

We need, in brief, a living God ; and, there- 
fore, by his ' unchangeableness ' nothing further is 
meant than the consistency with which all these 
inner states proceed from a nature that remains 
the same. On this point we are in accord with 
Metaphysic also, which requires of the nature of 
all substances — even of such as are finite — only 
this consistent exclusiveness of the series of forms 
within which each being among them varies ; it 
does not, however, require the monotony and rigid- 
ity of a perfect unchanging self-likeness. 

§ 29. A third formal predicate, Omnipresence, 
seems only at first sight to ascribe to God an at- 
tribute of spatiality such as we otherwise impute 
merely to matter. The religious meaning of this 
expression signifies rather the opposite. 

Concerning finite things we know that if they 
act upon each other immediately, it is only when 
in spatial contact, and therefore where they are ; 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

on the contrary, if they act at a distance, it is only 
mediately (by means of the propagation of their 
first action to elements lying between) : or we know 
that, if we concede to them an immediate action 
from afar, this action at least has its maximum 
when the nearness is greatest, and diminishes as 
the distance increases. 

Both limitations are supposed not to be true of 
God. If he wills to act upon any element of the 
world, then his activity is supposed not to have to 
traverse any way, long or short, up to the point 
where such element exists. Conversely, if an ele- 
ment of the world — for example, a finite spirit 
with his prayer — wills to act upon God, then it is 
not necessary to traverse any way in order to dis- 
cover God, as though he had a definite position in 
space. The rather is the activity of God everywhere 
alike immediately and perfectly present, without dif- 
ference of degree. 

Only this is meant by 'Omnipresence.' On the 
contrary, no one ever had any interest in ascribing 
positively to God himself, as one of his attributes, 
the predicate of an infinitely great extension in 
space. Quite the opposite, the simple design has 
been held of denying with reference to him in 
every respect that power to put under conditions 
which space-limitation exercises upon the recipro- 
cal action of finite beings. 



THE PREDICATE OF OMNIPOTENCE. 49 

§ 30. The predicate of Omnipotence obviously 
presupposes that conceptions of activity, either 
barely transforming or else creative, have some 
applicability to God ; and, under this presupposi- 
tion, it is then sought to exalt the power of God 
absolutely above all bounds ; but in the ordinary 
conception of this attribute such a result is not 
obtained. 

The simplest interpretation of Omnipotence, that 
" God can do all possible," does not satisfy the 
religious feeling ; we should thus obtain only the 
relatively greatest one of those finite forces which, 
collectively, are obliged to acknowledge certain lim- 
its of 'possibility' that stand fixed independently 
of them. God would therefore be subjected to a 
sphere of laws antecedent even to himself, which 
would determine for him the free scope of his power. 

The other explanation — " God can make even 
the impossible to be possible and actual" — without 
doubt expresses the real heart-meaning of the re- 
ligious feeling, but, in the aforesaid way of formu- 
lating it, appears absurd and unthinkable. For all 
order, all consistency and all coherency of the world 
appear to depend upon the limits between the 
possible and the impossible being absolutely im- 
movable. If that which is of itself impossible can 
once be made possible by any power whatever, 



5<D PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

then every sure foundation for making any conclu- 
sion whatever in relation to the coherency of the 
world falls away. 

But even this last explanation does the very 
thing for which it finds fault with the first ; it 
assumes that this distinction of the impossible 
from the possible already exists independently of 
God. God finds them both already determined and 
authenticated by means of a truth that is independ- 
ent of himself ; and only in practice does the ca- 
pacity belong to him of withdrawing aught that is 
subordinated to the self-authenticated conception 
of the impossible, from the domain of this concep- 
tion, and of disposing it under the conception of 
the possible. 

The thought mentioned above is neither sound 
in general, nor is such an omnipotence actually 
unlimited. Rather must we arrive at such an 
apprehension of God as makes God himself to be 
the prime reason for the opposition of the possible 
and the impossible having any significance at all 
in the world of actual existence. 

This thought, which is hard to define in the 
present connection, we shall pursue further later 
on. For our immediate purpose, that which is of 
religious value in it permits of being most simply 
and effectively expressed in the not quite correct 



THE PREDICATE OF ETERNITY. 5 I 

form that " God can do even the impossible." 
This form at least states one thing clearly, — to 
wit, that the impossible is no barrier for God. 

§ 31. The predicate of Eternity in time depends 
upon different motives ; first, as may be readily 
understood, upon the need that we be able to re- 
gard what is to be our support and our consolation 
as at no time ready to fail. But then, apart from 
every religious need, eternal duration is aestheti- 
cally an imposing idea on account of a sublimity 
which is worthy of the Absolute Principle. 

But the aforesaid expression, nevertheless, does 
not itself depend upon our seeing any value or any 
advantage in the bare filling-up of infinite time. 
Just as we did not apprehend omnipresence as a 
positive magnitude in space, but only as the nega- 
tion of all restrictive significations of space for the 
action of God; just so, 'infinite duration' signifies 
only the perfect independence of all those condi- 
tions that change in time, by which finite beings 
are constantly confined within a definite tract of 
their possible existence. 

§ 32. Moreover 'Time' also, like Space, is not 
to be thought of as though it were a somehow 
self-existing form, and as though God had only 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

the capacity of filling it up by his existence, how- 
ever far it may extend. But the difficult at- 
tempts which have been made to apprehend this 
relation otherwise, — to consider time as in God, 
or God as above time, — we must defer pro- 
visionally and make prominent another point in- 
stead. 

God, as filling eternal time in a perfectly un- 
changeable way, would be a mental representation 
of no service for religious interests. But if God 
is living and the subject of change, — that is, if 
anything whatever takes place within him, then 
it follows that he is in every second instant an 
other than he was in the first instant preceding ; 
— unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds 
in what way that ' Unity ' of his Being which is 
for us indispensable is maintained continuously 
through the course of his changes in time. 

Now, at this point we derive from Metaphysic the 
conviction that such ' Unity of a Being with itself ' 
certainly presupposes all its successive states to be 
comprehensible as different consequences of one and 
the same nature, and — in brief — to cohere together 
in accordance with one and the same formula ; but, 
likewise, the conviction that this presupposition is 
not at all adequate. For if we also, the thinking 
subjects, in the series of states a, a v a 2 , a 3J . . ., every- 



THE UXITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUS SPIRIT. 53 

where observe the secondary effect of the original 
nature a of a being ; and if we, on this account, 
apprehend such a series as the history of one and 
the same being a : still it is in this way by no 
means yet proved, that this is more than a subjec- 
tive apprehension on our part ; — that is to say, 
that the a, a v a 2 , . . ., are not different successive 
beings instead of only successive states of one and 
the same Being (a). 

If the latter conclusion is to be proved, then only 
the Being a itself can prove it ; and, of course, only 
by itself doing what, previously, merely we, the 
investigating subjects, have done. The Being a 
must comprehend itself as a 'unity'; must, as 
such, set itself over against the series a, a x , . . ., as 
mere states of its own, and be able to unite these 
successive states into one synchronous state by 
means of recollection. Expressed in simple man- 
ner : In no respect can we assert of selfless 
'Things,' but only of a self-conscious 'Spirit,' that 
it remains in the course of its history one and the 
same ; and, for the very reason that only it actual- 
izes the aforesaid unity by means of this deed of 
self-consciousness. Of a 'Thing,' on the contrary, 
— since it is merely subject to different states one 
after another, although in a sequence according 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

to law, — there is no decisive test by which to 
prove the fact and the means of its distinguishing 
itself from a succession of different and merely 
related Things. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 

§ 33. The paradoxical result of the previous re- 
flections is as follows : If all the predicates of 
'unconditionateness' are to be valid for the Highest 
Being, then one condition of this validity lies pre- 
cisely in the addition of a last formal predicate, — 
namely, that of Personal Existence. 

At the faith in this ' personality of God' the 
religious faculty, naturally enough, has not arrived 
by the ^above-mentioned way, but from familiar 
motives that lie nearer at hand. Against this 
faith, however, philosophic reflection has subse- 
quently been very unanimously directed with the 
assertion: 'Personality' is conceivable only in finite 
spirits, and in this case rests on conditions which 
can have no significance for the Absolute. 

The above-mentioned investigations concerning 
the possibility or impossibility of the assumption 
of a ' personal God ' should be briefly repeated in 
this connection. 

§ 34. Two thoughts which we believe ourselves 
obliged to distinguish, lie in the conception of 'per- 
sonality.' 



56 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

First: No 'personality,' or — what can for the 
moment pass as identical with it — no ' self-con- 
sciousness ' is conceivable without our ascribing to 
the spiritual subject, to which it is to belong, an 
image of cognition or an image of representation, 
of that which this subject itself is, and by means 
of which it distinguishes itself from others. Since 
these images of cognition, as well as those which 
we project for ourselves from other objects, may 
be more or less either correct or false ; therefore, 
self-consciousness is by no means identical with 
'adequate self-cognition.' We are rather to esti- 
mate the different degrees of its clearness and per- 
fection exactly according to the measure of the 
conformity of its content with the actual nature of 
the subject. 

But the mental representation of the aforesaid pic- 
ture will always deserve the title of ' self -conscious- 
ness ' so long as it contains this second factor: — 
to wit, so long as the other additional thought is 
present, that this mental image is the image of 
ourselves, and is by no means distinguished from 
any other image merely in the same way that a 
second object is distinguished from a third; but 
that it is rather significant of somewhat which, as 
'ego,' is to be placed in a fundamental and incom- 
parable opposition to all else. This second trans- 
action we consider in the first place. 



DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 57 

§ 35. It is a very common opinion that ' self-con- 
sciousness ' is a spiritual phenomenon which develops 
very gradually, and the origin and necessary con- 
ditions of which, accordingly, have a history. 

Such an opinion we recognize as correct only in 
relation to the first of the points distinguished 
above. To wit : We doubtless do not arrive at the 
knowledge of the properties of which we compose 
the before-mentioned mental image, or at the con- 
tent of the image of ourselves which we construct 
for ourselves, except by means of an accumulation 
of external and internal experiences. 

But in relation to the other point we cannot 
assent to this opinion. It does not admit of being 
shown intelligibly, how, in the course of the pro- 
jection of manifold mental representations, the 
moment must necessarily at some time arrive, when 
we should be compelled to consider one of these 
representations, not merely as image of one object 
which is distinguished from a second only in the 
same way as the latter from a third, but precisely 
as the image of our 'ego,' which stands in that 
absolute opposition to every non-ego, so easily in- 
telligible but so difficult further to describe. 

It will be found that the apparent ' origin ' of 
self-consciousness in this sense always presupposes 
the latent previous existence of its most essentia] 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

element, — namely, of a self-feeling in the same 
sense. 

§ 36. The materialistic attempts to generate self- 
consciousness from all manner of motions in brain- 
atoms returning upon themselves, are deserving of 
no respect. As they are unable in general to de- 
duce any ' consciousness ' from motions, so is this 
return of the motions also unable to generate any 
^^consciousness. 

But, on the whole, the frequent philosophical 
assertions — Personality can only be generated by 
an activity of the ego proceeding outward, and by 
a resistance of the non-ego which ' reflects ' this 
activity upon its own point of issue — are not a 
whit better. These modes of speech correspond 
to absolutely no demonstrable and real transaction. 
Such an activity of the ego proceeding outward 
nowhere admits of being designated by name. 
The analogy that it is thrown back like rays of 
light from the non-ego, is a mental image utterly 
without real motif and one under which it is not 
possible to bring any actual procedure. The con- 
clusion finally, that this activity becomes ' self-con- 
sciousness ' by means of such * reflection,' is a bare 
subreption. For it is precisely by this means that 
the mere return of the activity to its own point of 



THE IDEA OF THE EGO. 59 

issue is occasioned. But that it should now be 
compelled to apprehend this point as its own self, 
— and hence the precise origin of self-conscious- 
ness, — is a mere supplement of thought devoid of 
all basis. 

Only those attempts would deserve consideration 
which aim to show how the soul originally pro- 
duces merely intuitive ideas, and then, in the course 
of the reciprocal actions of these its individual 
products, projects also conceptions of non-intuitive 
subjects to which the aforesaid ideas belong as 
predicates ; that it finally succeeds also in assign- 
ing by thought one subject to the totality of all 
its inner states ; and that it thus generates the 
consciousness of the * ego ' as of that one which 
is at the same time subject and object of the act 
of ideation. 

§ 37. It is to be alleged, in the first place, against 
such attempts as the foregoing, that identity of 
ideating subject and ideated object is the general 
notion of every personality ; and that, therefore, c I ' 
is not by this means distinguishable from 'thou' 
and ' he.' And yet ' self -consciousness ' or ' person- 
ality ' obviously does not consist in subsuming 
ourselves, together with all others under one and 
the same general notion : but it consists in our 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

distinguishing ourselves from all others within this 
general notion. 

It might now be said: 'I' am subject and ob- 
ject of my thoughts, 'thou' art subject and object 
of thine, etc. If distinguishing thus is not to bring 
us round and round in a constant circle, then the 
distinction between ' mine ' and ' thine ' — the one 
we need to make - — cannot be deduced from the 
fact that the ' mine ' belongs to the ' I,' and the 
1 thine ' to the ' thou ' ; but between both of them 
there must already exist a distinction that is abso- 
lutely clear, immediately given, and in need of no 
deduction at all. 

Such now is actually the case ; and the distinc- 
tion depends upon this, that we are in general 
unable to think of any soul exclusively as a being 
active merely in the formation of ideas. Every 
soul is rather likewise capable of experiencing 
feelings of pleasure and of pain, and of combining 
these feelings with the content of ideas. Simply 
by means of the fact that the idea of any state 
whatsoever is combined with a feeling of pleasure 
or pain, is such state authenticated as our own, 
and no longer passes merely as the state of some 
being or other. 

We express the matter simply by means of the 
following antithesis : Granted that some superior 



FEELING AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 6 1 

spirit possesses so perfect an intelligence as to 
have a quite adequate cognition of all things, and 
of its own being as well, and yet is utterly lack- 
ing in the faculty for pleasure and pain ; and that 
every conceivable content is therefore as indif- 
ferent to it as is every other. Then such a spirit 
will not merely cognize itself, but will also know 
that in this case the cognizing subject is identical 
with the object cognized. It will, however, at the 
same time cognize the fact, that the case of such 
identity may occur precisely so millions of times 
in other beings ; and it will have no motive at all 
to regard one of these cases — just that one which 
occurs in its own self — as something special, and 
to distinguish this case from those others ; it will 
not, therefore, apprehend itself as an ' ego ' set 
over against some other as the 'non-ego.' On 
the other hand, an animal of the lowest order, 
that has scarcely any cognition of itself at all, 
but has indeed feeling for pleasure and pain, will 
never confound itself with the external world. 
When it feels a smart, it will experience this 
state as one belonging to itself alone ; and just 
by this means will it feel itself as an ' ego ' in 
opposition to the whole world, although it would 
not know at all how to specify precisely in what 
its own being consists. 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

§ 38. We arrive at the same goal by another 
way. We often hear it said : ' Ego ' and * non- 
ego* are two correlative conceptions, neither of 
which has in general any significance apart from 
its opposition to the other. Therefore, — it is said, 
— even the idea of the ' ego ' can originate only at 
the moment when that of the ' non-ego ' likewise 
originates. On this account, 'personality' is pos- 
sible only for finite beings which can be limited 
by a non-ego. 

The foregoing three propositions have really no 
inner connection with each other. The first of 
them must be pronounced perfectly absurd. Two 
conceptions, each of which should have a meaning 
only as a negation of the other, and should signify 
nothing further, would both of them have no mean- 
ing at all, and would not even acquire any by their 
being opposed to each other. One of the two 
must necessarily be independently determined and 
signify something. 

On consideration of our case we find the ques- 
tion to be : If ' ego ' and ' non-ego ' were two 
such conceptions, each of which contained barely 
the negation of the other : by what means would 
the soul then be induced, at the moment of the 
simultaneous origin of both, to rank itself under 
the conception of the ' ego ' rather than under that 



THE TERM ' NON-EGO ' RELATIVE. 6$ 

of the ' non-ego ' ; and what does it gain thereby if 
it does the one and forbears the other? To such 
a question no answer is possible but just this ; 
that one of the two conceptions signifies some- 
what independently determined, and on this ac- 
count the spirit applies it to itself, or does not so 
apply it. Now, without going further, the expres- 
sions themselves show that this independent sig- 
nificance belongs only to the ' ego ' as positively 
apprehended. What is meant by the term is 
directly obvious : what, on the contrary, is meant 
by the negative expression ' non-ego ' is in a pre- 
liminary way obscure ; and only thus much is 
known about it, — namely, that it is not the 'ego.' 
But this is just what would be achieved by the 
aforesaid immediate feeling, by which the ego posi- 
tively apprehends what belongs to it as its own; 
and, on the other hand, at first excludes from 
' itself in a merely negative way what does not 
belong to it. 

§ 39. The above position being conceded, it is 
still always possible to say : This ' feeling of the 
ego,' although in itself of a definite content, which 
does not primarily originate by means of its op- 
position to the non-ego, nevertheless, as a matter 
of fact, cannot actually occur except at the moment 



64 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

of such an opposition. To see colors is also an 
original capacity of the soul, and could not be pro- 
cured for it by means of any waves of ether, if it 
did not of itself possess the capacity ; yet we do 
see colors solely in case waves of ether act on us. 
Just so we feel ourselves as 'ego/ only in case an 
opposed non-ego acts on us. 

On this point it is now to be observed, that the 
possibility of personality is in any case erroneously 
attached to the opposition to a real non-ego ; as 
though by means of it that being, which in conse- 
quence thereof then feels itself as 'ego/ became 
really limited. 

A reciprocal action with a real non-ego, of such 
kind that this as such might enter into consciousness 
and the ego thus be posited in opposition to this per- 
ceived non-ego, never occurs at all. In all sensations 
and perceptions, what enters consciousness in con- 
sequence of such an influence, is invariably nothing 
but some inner state belonging to the spiritual 
being, — the sensation or mental representation it- 
self; it is never the reality by means of which the 
state is brought about. 

From these inner states the entire subsequent 
development of the spiritual life, and therefore that 
of the personality, proceeds. It suffices for laying 
the foundation of the latter, if a spiritual being has 



THE EXCITATION OF THE EGO. 65 

the faculty of apprehending itself as 'I' in opposi- 
tion to its own states, which are only its ' states ' 
and not 'I.' A relation to an external reality is not 
necessary ; and, consequently, ' personality ' also is 
not bound to the condition of Jiniteness, — to wit, 
to that of being limited by another reality of the 
same kind. 

§ 40. It may nevertheless always be said: Even 
if, in a course of thought that is once in process, 
this world of thoughts can serve as the non-ego 
in opposition to which the thinking spirit knows 
itself as the ego, still the first excitation of such 
process of thought needs the influence from without 
which can only be given by an actual reality affect- 
ing the senses. But this objection unwarrantably 
carries over what takes place as a matter of fact 
in the case of us men, as though it were indispen- 
sable to every personality. 

In all attempts at a physical explanation of the 
world, we are at last under the necessity of recog- 
nizing, not merely certain real elements, but also 
certain motions of the same, as original data; and 
it is of no advantage to search further for the 
causes of these motions also, — since they could 
only consist of still other motions ; nor is it con- 
ceivable how we are ever to get from a state of 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

equilibrium or rest as originally assumed, to dis- 
turbance of equilibrium or to motion. 

Only the same concession, and no more, is re- 
quired in relation to the Infinite Spirit. It is not 
to be thought of as somewhat which it were barely 
possible to imagine, but as somewhat which is im- 
agined as eternally and unceasingly actual ; — some- 
what to which no such state of rest was ever 
antecedent, as a state from which it would have 
been obliged to be extricated by means of special 
influence. 

§ 41. All further inquiries concerning this mat- 
ter (as to what, perhaps, gives conditions to this 
eternal movement of thought with respect to its 
content and its direction) must, of course, remain 
unanswered. Nevertheless it can be shown — not, 
indeed, with a strictness that satisfies the demands 
of science, but still in a manner intelligible to 
imagination, — why the matter stands with us men 
in that different fashion which we should not be 
justified in wanting to carry over and apply to 
God. 

When treating of 'Omnipresence' allusion was 
made to the truth, that God, who is the truly 
Existent in all Things and comprises them all as 
mere modifications of his Being, stands in need of 



FINITE SPIRITS DEPEND ON THINGS. 6j 

no mediation through transmitted effects, in order 
to be acquainted with the individual elements of 
the world and the states belonging to them. Every 
finite spirit, however, has its existence only from 
a definite point of time onward, and has in the 
coherence of all Things a determinate position in 
the system, which assigns to it also a limited place 
in space. 

Now it follows from the above-mentioned truth, 
that finite spirits, who have very much outside of 
themselves which they themselves are not, stand 
in absolute need of a real outside world and of its 
effects, in order to attain to the development of 
the life of thought possible to them. 

It is intelligible, further, that finite spirits who 
are not the Absolute itself but only modifications 
or fragments of the same, and yet likewise possess 
all their existence only through this Absolute, do 
constantly, in case they reflect upon themselves, 
suppose that they find an obscure germ in their 
own being, — to wit, just this power of the Absolute 
itself. This power it is which works through and 
through them, and, without their own assistance, 
prescribes for them the universal forms of their 
spiritual activity, their sensation, imagination, judg- 
ment, etc. ; and which permits them only within nar- 
row limits to dispose further of this dowry, and 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

to pursue their special ends. That is to say, 
therefore : ' Personality ' is in them only very im- 
perfectly accomplished. There remains something 
back in the ego, which it cannot itself explain. 
This is a fact which is corroborated by the course 
of Psychology, wherein always at last the question 
recurs, — What then really are we ? and can never 
be answered to our perfect satisfaction. 

Finally, it does not indeed admit of direct proof, 
but is none the less a probable assumption, that 
the laws of the psychical mechanism to which our 
inner life is subjected are also connected with this 
'finiteness.' From them it follows, however, that 
our ideas inhibit one another ; that only a small 
number of them is at any time present in con- 
sciousness ; that the forgotten ones return, indeed, 
to our recollection in accordance with general laws, 
but not always in a manner corresponding to our 
momentary need. Hence it comes about that we 
frequently over-hasten ; that we permit certain 
measures of conception which are just present in 
consciousness, partially to pass over into transac- 
tions which we later, when we have collected our- 
selves, may no longer recognize as our own ; that, 
finally, we forget very much, and with increasing 
age can no longer transport ourselves back into 
the frames of mind, feelings and enthusiasms of 
the earlier epochs of life. 



THE INFINITE A PERFECT PERSONALITY. 69 

All these hindrances of a perfect 'personality' 
we can imagine as not existent in the Infinite 
Spirit. On this account, we conclude with the 
assertion which is exactly the opposite of the 
customary one : Perfect personality is reconcilable 
only with the conception of an Infinite Being; for 
finite beings only an approximation to this is at- 
tainable. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION. 

§ 42. We reserve the further concrete predi- 
cates, chiefly of an ethical kind, by which we 
have to complete the still abstract conception of 
an infinite personality, until after we have consid- 
ered the relation of this personality to the world. 
And this relation itself we treat for convenience 
under the three distinctive names of Creation, 
Preservation and Government. 

In relation to the first topic, we omit all ancient 
and modern cosmogonies, such as intend to fur- 
nish an intuitive picture of the process of ' crea- 
tion ' and of the succession of particular creative 
acts ; — a picture, which is in general impossible, 
and in particulars not to be established with any 
certainty. Our design is merely to show what 
fundamental conceptions admit of being formed 
concerning that relation of God to the world 
from which the creation proceeds, or in which it 
consists, or which is established by means of it. 

We divide the essentially different views, which 
are possible on this subject, into the three fol- 
lowing : the first of which attempts to trace the 



CREATION NOT DEVELOPMENT. 7 1 

world to the "consistent development of the 
nature of God," the second to his will, the third 
to a creative act. 

§ 43. The first view, crudely elaborated and 
satisfying merely to the imagination but not to 
speculation, appears in all the emanation theories 
of ancient and modern times. This we exclude 
from our investigation. 

On the contrary, the conception of the world 
as a ' necessary, involuntary, and inevitable devel- 
opment of the nature of God,' which rests essen- 
tially upon the foundation of modern scientific 
views, is worthy of consideration. 

So far as this view endeavors to exclude a God 
who rules without principle in blind arbitrariness, 
it is correct ; and in this respect corresponds also 
to our religious need. But we must resist with 
the greatest possible decisiveness the further 
apotheosis of the notion of ' development ' conse- 
quent upon this view, which it is customary just 
now to express and to extol with such great em- 
phasis, as though it were identical, as a matter of 
course, with all that is great and sublime and holy. 

If it were only a question concerning a theo- 
retic explanation of the course of the world, then 
such a conception would be satisfactory. But it 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

is wholly useless from the religious point of view, 
because it leads consistently to nothing but a 
thorough-going Determinism, according to which 
not only is every thing that must happen, in case 
certain conditions occur, appointed in pursuance of 
general laws ; but according to which even the suc- 
cessive occurrence of these conditions, and conse- 
quently the whole of history with all its details, is 
predetermined. 

In such a mechanical contrivance there is no 
place whatever for any 'freedom' or ' activity,' or 
for an effort that shall produce aught which does 
not originate from the mechanism itself. Religious 
opinion assumes rather that, while there are uni- 
versal laws, without whose efficacy no ' design ' 
whatever would be able by definite means to attain 
to a definite goal, there is however at the same 
time, on the basis and in the domain of this reign 
of law, a free, voluntary activity, which, by the 
use and combination of the given elements acting 
in accordance with law, produces that even, which 
would have no existence without such activity. 

The above-mentioned assumption has its diffi- 
culties. Until, however, it is shown decisively to 
be impossible, the religious feeling will never re- 
turn to the thought of an ' undesigned, inevitable 
development ' of the world from the nature of God, 



CREATIVE WILL NOT MOMENTARY. 



but will derive it from an act of the divine will, 
without which it would not have existed. 

§ 44. In speaking of the will of God, we natu- 
rally think first of the analogy of our own will ; 
we may not however summarily transfer to the 
former that which is peculiar to the latter. 

Now the aims to which our will can be directed, 
are only given to us finite beings progressively 
by means of experience. Hence under the term 
' will ' we conceive primarily of a spiritual activity 
momentarily awakening, which is directed chiefly to 
the production of a state not yet existing, or to 
the change of a state already existing. Even in 
those cases in which we ' will ' nothing new but 
merely the status quo, we become conscious of 
this act of will, at least distinctly so, only if 
something threatens to disturb this state that has 
been ' willed ' by us. 

The foregoing conceptions are not applicable to 
the creative will of God. Although the imagi- 
nation naturally represents the dependence of the 
world upon the will of God in the most forcible 
manner by making a period of time precede in 
which even this creative will of God had no 
existence ; still there is no ground whatever for 
forming a philosophical tenet out of this view, 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

— harmless as it is to religion, — and for speaking 
of an inner life in God, which, after this period, 
has proceeded to the decision to create and to its 
execution. Besides it would be impossible to fill 
this space of time with anything but a delusive 
history of development, in which the systematic 
coherence of all the thoughts, by uniting which 
we endeavor to interpret for ourselves the being 
of God, would be fictitiously converted into a chro- 
nological sequence ; and by this means the nature 
of God would for the first time become completely 
realized. 

This is, philosophically considered, erroneous, 
and religiously devoid of all significance : we abide 
therefore by the assumption, that the 'will to 
create ' is an absolutely eternal predicate of God, 
and ought not to be used to designate a deed of 
his so much as the absolute dependence of the 
world upon his will in contradistinction to its in- 
voluntary ' emanation ' from his nature. 

§ 45. With the foregoing assertion, however, 
there seems to vanish something which we regard 
as necessary for the religious conception of crea- 
tion ; to wit, a will which is constantly existent, has 
no longer the character of a deed. In order that 
will may be distinguished from that involuntary 



WILLING CONSIDERED AS DEED. 75 

development, from which we intended to distin- 
guish it, it seems necessary that some deed or 
work be added to the act of will, by whose accom- 
plishment alone that which is willed truly becomes 
the complete possession of the one who wills, and 
at the same time becomes a reality. There is in- 
volved herein an undoubtedly genuine religious 
need, but it is wrongly formulated in dependence 
upon analogies derived from our own willing and 
doing, which are not transferable to God. 

In the first place as regards the efficacy of our 
own will, we know psychologically that our 'will- 
ing ' can never do anything else but produce a 
definite psychical state within us (an idea, a feel- 
ing, a wish). With this state, as soon as it is 
once in existence, an order of nature under the 
control of general law, wholly independent of our 
volition and hardly accessible to our intelligence, 
has connected a definite result ; and this result 
then originates without our being able to compre- 
hend the process of its origination or to con- 
tribute anything further to it. 

Now we believe to be sure that, in the 
performance of our corporal movements, we feel 
at once the transition of our will to the limbs, 
and that to a certain extent we observe the 
will at its work, by which it brings to pass the 



j6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

effect. But it is known psychologically, that we 
actually feel in this case only the changes, which 
the will, in a manner wholly beyond the power 
of observation, has already produced in the limbs, 
and from which, in a supplemental way, the sen- 
sations of weariness and exertion are produced in 
the consciousness. These feelings therefore do not 
show us how those movements are produced by 
us ; but they only show how much disturbance our 
organism has experienced, in consequence of those 
movements having been attached to the action of 
our will, in accordance with an order of nature 
unknown to us. 

If therefore we recognize as our own ' deed ' 
an effect which issues from us only in case we 
have had, at the time of its accomplishment, all 
the aforesaid feelings, then this analogy of the 
human will cannot be transferred to God. For 
this apparent activity in accomplishing something 
beyond the bare action of willing is in truth 
merely a witness to the powerlessness of our 
will, which effects something only in case a 
higher power has united with it the origination 
of changes in external objects. 

In this sense, therefore, we may not, in addi- 
tion to the creative will of God, still further 
postulate a special creative deed ; but we must 



REALIZATION OF THE DIVINE WILL. jj 

be satisfied with the thought that the will of the 
Supreme Being is without further procedure the 
realization of that which He wills. 

§ 46. But after all there remains a genuine 
religious need, which was expressed, although 
wrongly, by the demand for a divine work of 
creation. 

The value of the feelings, to which we referred, 
does not consist in the fact that they brought to 
our view the modus agendi of our will, but that at 
each minutest instant they furnished us the knowl- 
edge as to how far the realization of its activity 
had already advanced. Suppose, for example, that 
we give our arm a wide swing, then we have at 
each minutest point of time a new sensation which 
discloses to us the magnitude of the breadth of 
the movement already executed ; and therefore 
the progress of our wills' mode of operation, 
although in itself unobserved, is noted by us 
from the beginning to the end of the move- 
ment. Now it is precisely because in such a 
case our consciousness always has an immediate 
feeling in conjunction with the product of the 
will, that such movements appear as, in the strict- 
est sense, our own living deed. On the contrary, 
in the case of the stone that flies away from the 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



hand at the completion of that movement of the 
arm, although it has in fact got its velocity by 
means of us, still we have no immediate sensation 
of its further movement. While this movement, 
therefore, as well as its subsequent effects upon 
other objects, seem to us to be consequences of 
our deed, they no longer seem to be our own ac- 
tivity itself. 

Now it is the counterpart of just this, which 
it is really intended to exclude from the concep- 
tion of the divine creative work. It is not to be 
supposed that the act of will originates a bare 
result in which the consciousness of the one who 
wills were no longer present ; but it is to be sup- 
posed that the creative will remains in that con- 
stant feeling in conjunction with the state of its 
product, which we men experience only on occasion 
of the movements of our own body, and not on 
occasion of the movements of external objects in- 
directly produced. 

Now because this feeling in our case is psycho- 
logically connected with the effort and labor, which 
are simply a consequence of our finite nature, some 
have arrived at the false conception that this must 
be so even in the case of God Himself ; and on 
this account have demanded the aforesaid special 
work of creation. 



XO PROCESS OF CREATION. 79 

§ 47. The sum and substance of the preceding 
discussion is, that the conception of creation prop- 
erly signifies nothing more than this ; that the world, 
with respect to its existence as well as its content, 
is completely dependent upon the will of God, and 
not a mere involuntary ' development ' of his 
nature ; that it proceeds, however, only from the 
will and not from a special work of God, — this 
latter conception being always applicable only in 
cases where a will endeavors to realize its pur- 
pose in conflict with an existing world that is 
independent of it ; whereas of God we in fact 
assert that He " has created the world out of 
nothing," — a strange expression, which strictly 
interpreted means to say, in a merely negative 
manner, that there is nothing out of which God 
constructed the world ; and which then whimsi- 
cally makes this Nothing appear again as a sort 
of ' stuff ' from which it is created. 

There can be no consistent description of the 
process of creation, for the reason that there is 
no such process. Such process in fact, whenever 
the attempt has been made to imagine it, has 
always presupposed in turn the existence of 
another world, and of certain forms of happening 
already in use in it. 

In regard still further to the content of crea- 



80 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

tion, it would be from a religious point of view 
an object of interest for us, only in case we con- 
ceive withal of a plan which is to be realized in 
the world ; and this subject is to be discussed 
under the head of the conception of 'Government.' 






CHAPTER VI. 



OF PRESERVATION. 



§ 48. To ascribe the preservation of the world 
to a special divine activity, may seem to be a super- 
fluous thought. In fact, the common opinion of 
natural philosophy amounts to this, that the world, 
when once in existence, maintains itself as a mat- 
ter of course by the efficacy of the laws which 
have once gained prevalence in it. The utmost 
that is conceded is, that the origination of the 
world may be the object of an action, but not its 
continuation after it has once originated. 

The foregoing opinion only serves to remind us 
that we really have already before us, even with re- 
spect to creation, a difficulty of which, in the ordi- 
nary reflection, we are less sensible only in relation 
to this conception of preservation. To wit, the ques- 
tion is raised, in what way God, in the action of 
his will, has arrived at a decision concerning that 
which should be or should not be. 

The readiest answer, — namely that He has 
summoned into actual existence only that which 
is in itself possible, — as well as the other 
answer, — that He has summoned into actual 



82 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

existence the best among many possible worlds, 
both contain the thought that what is good or 
not good, possible or not possible, has already 
been decided independently of the will of God ; 
and therefore that, after all, there precedes God, 
the Supreme Principle, a certain realm of eternal 
truths as a still higher Principle, to which He 
together with his activity is now obliged to 
become subordinate. 

This strange idea is not improved by the 
immediate reply that, in the use of a distinction 
frequently made, we designate those ' eternal 
truths ' merely as the ' content of God's under- 
standing,' and not as a necessity foreign to Him 
and which stands over against Him objectively. 
No improvement of the idea is attained so long 
at least as we have in mind in this connection 
our own spiritual life, in which of course all 
these general truths appear as something pro- 
ceeding from a higher power and not connected 
with our personality ; or, at all events, as some- 
thing not deducible from it. 

Concerning these difficulties we must make the 
following somewhat detailed reflections. 

§ 49. It has already been observed, in dis- 
coursing of the possibility of the reciprocal 



LAWS NOT INDEPENDENT OF GOD. 83 

actions of the elements of the world, that the 
prevalent method of speaking of the " authority 
of general laws of nature over Things " has noth- 
ing properly corresponding to it in the actual 
state of the case. 

Laws can exist only in a twofold manner : they 
may either exist at the instant when they are 
obeyed, as the activity of the elements them- 
selves, which seem to follow them ; or, in the 
observing spirits which compare the events, as 
conscious rules for the combination of the ideas, 
by which we (the observing spirits) are enabled, 
in accordance with the reality, to determine 
beforehand from given states those which suc- 
ceed them. 

On the contrary, laws never exist outside, between, 
beside, or above the Things that are to obey them. 
And if we ourselves should intend to assume 
that a ghost-like existence, of a sort that is wholly 
beyond the power of representation, belongs to 
them, the question would be left the more un- 
answerable, how in that *case they went to work 
to secure obedience from the elements which were 
wholly foreign to them. 

This first mode of representation, then, accord- 
ing to which God even would have 'found at 
hand ' a sum of self-existing truths, must be wholly 
abandoned. 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

§ 50. The first modification of the thought we 
are considering, to the effect that the eternal 
truths were nothing else but the mode of the 
action of God's own nature and intelligence, we 
found, just at the close of the last paragraph but 
one, to be not altogether satisfactory. 

To wit : we find in ourselves such truths (as 
for example the law of identity, or the simple 
geometrical intuitions, or the fundamental ethical 
judgments of our conscience), as do not present 
themselves to us, at any rate when considered 
individually, as something foreign to our nature, 
but as the mode of our own experience or the 
form of our own activity. But we find several of 
such truths within us, and we find no connection 
between them. For, from the fact that the propo- 
sition of identity is a necessity of our thought, it 
by no means certainly follows that we must also 
have an intuition of space, or must make a distinc- 
tion between good and evil. Hence the aggregate 
of these truths seems to us after all to be some- 
thing foreign to our own being, and not deducible 
from it; or at least something whose origin from 
it cannot be known. 

If it were thus with God, it would seem to us 
as if He met with these eternal truths, not to be 
sure as forces external to Himself, but as some- 



ETERNAL TRUTHS DO NOT LIMIT GOD. 85 

thing within Himself, which He could regard only 
in the light of a gift bestowed upon Him as it 
were. 

Now we can of course never give a positive de- 
scription of the manner in which those truths, that 
to our discernment are disparate, are united with 
each other in God, and are experienced as belong- 
ing together in the unity of a single thought. But, 
for all that, there is no contradiction in the as- 
sumption that with God it is so ; and that only 
we finite beings, who are able to possess nothing 
but fragments of the whole of truth, fail to grasp 
the inner connection by which these truths are 
perfected into one whole. 

§ 51. The above-mentioned view of the case also 
often proves unsatisfactory. The assumption, that 
the eternal truths are the proper modus agendi of 
the divine understanding itself, has always seemed 
to many to involve after all a limitation of his un- 
conditionateness and omnipotence. In such case 
we should not be content with anything less than 
the statement that God did not possess this modus 
agendi, but that He first bestowed it upon Himself. 
Indeed even in such case it might perhaps still be 
doubted, whether in the choice of such a modus 
from among many that are conceivable and now 



86 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

excluded, there were not after all again involved a 
limitation of his unconditionateness, although a 
self-chosen limitation. 

In one view of the matter, however, it may be 
remarked that in this way the conception of God 
loses all content whatever ; and that, instead of 
conceiving of that concrete Being to whom uncon- 
ditionateness in respect to his conduct belongs, 
we have made the empty conception of uncondi- 
tionateness itself the subject or the principle of 
the world. To do this is, fundamentally consid- 
ered, just the same mistake that is made when 
we content ourselves with the abstract expressions, 
the ' One,' the ' Existent,' the • Absolute,' etc., and 
suppose that by them we have expressed the Su- 
preme Principle, instead of designating by name or 
representing that which deserves to be acknowledged 
as the Real Principle of the world, because it pos- 
sesses in virtue of its own concrete nature the 
alleged predicates. 

But the misunderstandings that arise in this con- 
nection admit of being analyzed somewhat further 
in detail. 

§ 52. If, in the first place, we see a limitation of 
omnipotence in the fact, that even omnipotence, 
from its very beginning onward, follows a definite 



CAPACITY NEVER INDETERMINATE. 87 

modus agendi, then we may in the next place be 
reminded that we in fact never mentally represent 
even any finite 'power' or 'capacity' as a predicate 
which would inhere in a Thing without connection 
with its remaining n predicates as an (n-t-l)th. 
Just as little do we represent such a power as a 
'being able in general,' which would still have no 
direction whatever ; so that it would only be de- 
termined subsequently by secondary circumstances, 
what sort of activity this ' being able ' will exercise, 
and with reference to what objects. 

On the contrary every 'power' or 'capacity' is 
conceivable only as one that is quite definitely 
fixed in reality. And the abstract conception of 
'capacity in general,' which we may form just as 
legitimately as the conception of 'motion in gen- 
eral,' can just as little signify something real as can 
the latter before it is again furnished with a ' direc- 
tion ' and a 'velocity,' from which, in the forma- 
tion of the general conception, the abstraction was 
made. 

If now this conception of 'power' is to be ex- 
alted to that of 'omnipotence,' it cannot be ac- 
complished by omitting every such act of determi- 
nation as would fix some modus agendi ; but only 
by representing just this modus as one so compre- 
hensive, that all actual capacities and powers 



PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



whatever, which appear in the world, originate from 
it. In that, we should have substituted the mere 
general conception of power for the supreme actual 
Power. But still further, omnipotence, even in this 
case, cannot be conceived of as a predicate addi- 
tional to the rest of the predicates of God ; but it 
is only an expression for the efficacy in action of 
just these predicates, and therefore of that concrete 
nature of God in which all reality is comprehended. 

§ 53. We may now be tempted for the last time 
to inquire : If God's omnipotence is only co-exten- 
sive with his nature, why then has God this de- 
terminate nature a and not another b or c ? and 
does not the fact that He is not this h or c 
involve again a limitation of his being ? 

In support of such thoughts an appeal is also 
made perhaps to the celebrated proposition " Omnis 
determinatio est negatio" ; the meaning of which is 
often enough thought to be, that all determination 
is limitation, because it is the product of the nega- 
tion of innumerable other possibilities. 

Thus understood, the proposition would be 
thoroughly false. It is only in cases where a com- 
pletely disjunctive judgment is already validated, 
in accordance with which a subject s must be 
either a orb or c, that the affirmation of a can 



NEGATION AND AFFIRMATION. 89 

originate from the negation of b and c. And even 
in such cases this negation is nothing more than 
a reason for our cognition, from which we conclude 
that s is a, but is not a reason in reality why s is 
actually a. That is to say ; It is not the real de- 
termination, but our subjective certainty of its 
existence, that follows from the negation of other 
possibilities. 

But in other cases, as a rule, the above-men- 
tioned proposition can only signify, not that every 
determination originates from a negation of that 
which is different from it, but that it is accessory 
to, or consequent upon, such negation. 

If we thus apprehend the proposition, the doubt 
above suggested will subside ; the doubt, namely, 
whether after all there is not again involved a limi- 
tation of a, in the very fact that something can now 
no longer be b or c, because it is originally a. This 
thought has some significance for us finite beings, 
to whom a determinate nature a is given, beside 
and outside of which the natures p and y of other 
beings — as for example those of other species of 
animals — are likewise met with as actualities. Since 
then we are unable to transpose ourselves out of 
our own nature into the p and y foreign to us, this 
incapacity seems to us a limitation which prevents 
our enjoyment of a good that actually exists. 



Cp PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

But the foregoing analogy is not transferable 
to the nature of God. For this nature a is pre- 
cisely such an one as is not the product of a 
still higher nature M, among the consequences 
of which it would find itself coordinated with 
the other equally real products b and c : and 
at the same time excluded from them. But out- 
side of this a nothing exists : a is rather the 
primal source of the sum-total of reality ; and, 
indeed, a source of such sort that, owing to its 
concrete nature, thinking beings also are met 
with in this realm of reality, who are able to 
distinguish a from a never-existent, but con- 
ceivable non-a ; and who now are able to raise 
the wondrous question, why all the world bears 
the character of this a and not the other char- 
acter of a non-a. 

The noteworthy capacity for denying in thought 
what actually exists, — a capacity which is itself 
only a product of the laws that are valid in 
actuality upon the basis of that a, — misleads 
us into the acceptance of this strange and utterly 
unthinkable idea : before God was and before the 
world was, there was already a multitude of coor- 
dinate, possible future Gods and worlds ; and there 
was possible and necessary a choice between them, 
by which the total character a of the actual God, 



GOD AND ETERNAL TRUTH. 9 1 

and of the actual World was established ; but at 
the same time there was by this means intro- 
duced a limitation of both of them, because now 
they could no longer be b and c. 

§ 54. We arrive at the same result, if we 
undertake to think through one of the two fol- 
lowing propositions : ' God has only recognized the 
truth ' ; or, ' He has created it.' 

Arbitrary statutes admit of being ( recognized ' 
in so far as our transactions are willingly or 
reluctantly accommodated to them. But in 
thinking we can only ' recognize ' as truth that 
which accords with the laws of such thinking, — 
that is, with its modus agendi. And thus even God 
would have been able to ' recognize ' any ' truth ' 
that he met with, as truth, only because it had 
already belonged to the intrinsic nature of his own 
thought. 

Moreover statutes of all sorts admit of being 
'made/ and a practical obedience to them may be 
enforced : but to make something which, after it is 
done, should constitute a truth, is only possible in 
case the productive energy itself is already of itself 
fulfilling, as rules of its own action, precisely the 
same conditions as those that are conditions of the 
truth to the intelligence associated with the energy. 



92 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

By both paths, then, we return to the propo- 
sition, that eternal truths are neither antecedent 
norms nor subsequent products of the divine activ- 
ity ; but are nothing else than the actual form 
of this very energizing ; and that, in the special 
sense of the word ' truth,' they appear as com- 
mands, which something not yet existent must 
satisfy, only in our subjective reflection, in case 
we attempt to bring the future into combination 
with the present. 

§ 55. The foregoing considerations are con- 
nected with the conception of the Preservation 
of the world in the following manner. 

The common view of nature, in modern times, 
either asserts that God indeed created the world 
at the beginning, but after it was created left it 
to itself and to the further development of the 
general laws which He established in it. Or, in 
the other case, since the act of creation can 
never be made apprehensible, such act is entirely 
left out ; and it is simply asserted that the world 
which lies ready-made before us, is maintained 
by the constant prevalence of its general laws, 
and needs no divine support. 

In opposition to this the proposition of religion 
is heard : " Preservation is continual new-creation." 



SUBSTANCE AS INDESTRUCTIBLE. 93 

It is not conceivable that this can be intended 
to mean : The world of the next instant is, as to 
its content, entirely new and foreign to that of 
the preceding instant. So far from this, we 
naturally accept the assumption that, in the divine 
activity, there is unity and coherence ; and, for 
this reason, the creative act of the next instant 
also is a consequence of that of the preceding. 
But, nevertheless, the aforesaid proposition would 
deny that the world of one instant perpetuates 
itself by its own agency and by its general laws 
into the next instant. 

For that very reason it will be superfluous, as 
regards all special inquiries into the coherence of 
the processes of nature, to come back to the 'co- 
working of God ' ; and it is sufficient to speak of 
the consecutive order of nature which He has 
established. Still, in our idea of the whole, we 
must decidedly guard against the view which speaks 
of an actual self-sufficiency of nature, and which, 
from this as from a secure stand-point, exercises a 
negative criticism in opposition to the religious in- 
tuitions. 

It must rather be asserted that if corporal 'sub- 
stance ' is indestructible, it is not so by its own 
agency or in accordance with a claim to the right 
growing out of its own nature, but because the 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

divine creative power preserves it continuously at 
each instant ; and that if, in the course of nature, 
the same forces always act according to the same 
laws, this does not come to pass because these 
forces were of themselves eternal and these laws 
of themselves efficient, but because it lies within 
the plan of the divine efficiency to employ, at each 
instant of the course of the world, this number of 
homogeneous actions, as means for the production 
of more composite products. 

In a word : The entire interior consistency of 
the cohering order of nature, upon which the 
natural sciences are supported, is conceded as a 
matter of fact ; but taken as a whole and at large 
it is regarded as a system of mutually condition- 
ing actualities, utterly dependent upon the divine 
power ; so that ultimately, therefore, the World 
does not preserve itself but is preserved by God. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF GOVERNMENT. 

§ 56. We can only speak of Government in 
case there are elements that, with a certain inde- 
pendence of behavior on their part, threaten to 
withdraw from a plan prescribed to them, which 
the governing principle intends to realize. 

The considerations to which we last referred 
therefore seem to leave no place for the application 
of this conception. Indeed, in proportion as these 
considerations themselves make the preservation 
of the world dependent upon the constant action 
of the will of God, do they obscure the thought 
to which we would firmly hold; — namely, that the 
World is not a mere immanent development of 
God, but a product of his will. 

In order that this contradiction may have any 
significance, the product of the will, after it is 
created, would have to possess a certain independ- 
ence. Or, to use a well-known mode of expres- 
sion, the world would have to be 'outside' of God 
and not merely a process ' in ' Him. 

We need not adhere to these last mentioned 
expressions in terms of space which would lead 



g6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

to such endless and perfectly empty disputes ; but 
the inquiry must be made as to what must really 
constitute that 'mode of behavior' which it is sup- 
posed may be figuratively designated by these 
expressions. And to this question the only answer 
will probably be, that only that Reality possesses 
the independence obviously here intended, which 
is able to have its own states, — such, that is, as 
are not immediately states of the ' Universal Sub- 
stance ' ; and to initiate processes which do not 
proceed from that Substance. 

If now we consider how these abstract postulates 
might be fulfilled, we find but one Reality which 
actually fulfils them ; namely, spiritual life. 

A being which has experience of itself as an 
individual subject for its own states, and which 
distinguishes these states from those of other 
beings, may, it is true, be nothing whatever as to 
its entire existence but a product of the Infinite 
Being. But after it is once in existence, it is,- by 
the very form of its existence, by this conscious- 
ness which places itself in relation to itself, dis- 
tinguished as an individual ego from the very 
Absolute, that in reality conditions it, and that 
now, as posited over against itself, belongs to the 
non-ego. And by this act, or by this form of its 
existence, does it possess that relative independ- 



NATURE OF THE 'WORLD-STUFF.' 97 

encc which we designate when we say that it is 
'outside' of God. 

§ 57. Hence it would follow (what we now 
remark only incidentally) that, with respect to 
our entire view of the World, we find ourselves 
in the presence of an alternative. 

If spiritual life is the only form in which we 
can conceive of a reality that is not a mere state 
of some other real being, then our current idea 
of a motionless, blind and lifeless 'stuff,' which 
should exist outside of us, can signify nothing 
that is actual. 

We must either assume, as the Idealist does, 
that what we regard as such a ' stuff ' has no 
existence external to spirits, but that the self- 
coherent semblance of such a 'world-stuff' (com- 
pare especially J. G. Fichte), is merely produced 
within these spirits, and for them only, by a 
universal power which works in all spirits. Or 
else we must conclude, in entire agreement 
with the Spiritualists, that each atom of that 
which appears to us as mere ' stuff,' is after all 
something better than this ; that is to say, it 
participates in the most general characteristic of 
the spiritual life : and this characteristic consists 
in somehow (either in distinct consciousness or in 



98 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

the mere feeling of pleasure and pain) ' being for 
self,' and not in merely forming an object of con- 
templation for others. 

It is only the common realistic opinion on this 
subject that would seem to us impossible, accord- 
ing to which an entirely 'selfless stuff' would be 
just as actually existent outside of us as we are 
wont commonly to represent it. 

There is no doubt that either of the two fore- 
going views may be formed into an entirely con- 
sistent apprehension of the world. But from the 
religious point of view, we are not necessarily 
required to choose between them. 

§ 58. If however there were in existence noth- 
ing more than an indefinite number of such inde- 
pendent, created beings, there would still be no 
foundation for the conception of a government of 
the world. It would still be thinkable, that the 
world might develop itself in a perfectly impertur- 
bable harmony ; and the problem for all spirits 
would consist in merely looking on, and in con- 
sciously and admiringly rejoicing in this fact. 

In point of fact, however, religious sentiment 
has never been satisfied with this, but has always 
insisted, at the outset very obscurely although vig- 
orously, that something new also must happen in 



POSSIBILITY OF SOMETHING NEW. 99 

the world, — something that is not a mere conse- 
quence of what has gone before; — and that' there 
must exist in individual spirits just this capacity 
to initiate a new series of events ; and therefore in 
brief a freedom of acting or primarily of willing, 
by which they separate themselves from the Uni- 
versal Substance in a still more decided manner 
than by their mere 'Being for self as relatively 
independent beings. 

In this way then has the problem originated 
which leads to the conception of a government. 
For only after this is there any possibility of 
events by which the continuous realization of a 
predeterminate plan of the world might be inter- 
rupted. 

§ 59. Even the above-mentioned demand for free- 
dom would have no religious significance, if it were 
directed in a merely formal way to the possibility 
of new beginnings. For that something new hap- 
pen in the world, has of itself no more value than 
that the whole course of the world be an unin- 
terrupted, consecutive process of development ; in 
which of itself also, as we have already previously 
suggested, there is involved nothing that is worthy 
of adoration. 

But we know surely, that we only demand this 



IOO PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

formal ' freedom ' because we regard it as the con- 
ditio sine qua non for the fulfilment of ethical com- 
mands, whose obligatory majesty we consider to be 
the most absolute certainty and one that needs 
no derivation from any other source whatever. 

This conviction is the absolutely fundamental 
point upon which the entire religious character of 
our view of the world depends. And for him who 
does not directly experience and acknowledge this, 
all questions of religious philosophy are altogether 
superfluous. 

§ 60. The ideas of freedom are not induced by 
speculation ; but they rest entirely upon the fact 
of that penitence and self-condemnation in which 
we believe we find the immediate assurance of the 
possibility, that the choice, whose failure is now 
repented of, might have been reached even sooner 
than it was. 

This idea is, in an obscure way, the first and 
most natural, the one that has precedence in hu- 
man culture. It was not till a later period that the 
scientific contemplation of nature disclosed the con- 
ception of a ' necessary causal connection,' and then 
extended it over the whole course of the world, 
so that now the idea of freedom seems like a 
strange exception and as such is denied. It is 



POSSIBILITY OF FREE CHOICE. IOI 

acknowledged that even the ethical ideals origi- 
nate in the mechanical course of psychical develop- 
ment. But how much influence they have upon 
our action, depends entirely upon the involuntary 
states and movements within our own interior 
being. It is therefore due to a process of nature, 
that the impulse to good actions, or even to bad 
actions, preponderates within us ; and the mechan- 
ical conditions for such result may be strengthened 
by a correct or by a perverted education. But, 
to be consistent and candid about it, an action in 
the proper sense, such as would issue from our 
own ego, will then no longer exist. And even the 
inducement to all such reflection — that is, the feel- 
ing of penitence — will be regarded as a disagree- 
able state, about like a feeling of sickness ; and 
it will be maintained that the wish involved in 
this feeling, — the wish that one had acted differ- 
ently, — gives no assurance whatever of this hav- 
ing been possible at an earlier moment. 

Such views as the foregoing are not to be 
got at by speculation ; they involve no contra- 
diction of cognition. If they are abandoned, it 
can be done only upon the basis of an undemon- 
strable belief, that after all there is directly dis- 
closed in the aforesaid self-condemnation, the pos- 
sibility of a free choice, without which 'the bad 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

conscience' and the pain of 'penitence' would con- 
tinue to be totally inexplicable phenomena in a 
rational order of the world. 

§ 61. We cannot think of doing more than refute 
the objections against the possibility of the con- 
ception of freedom ; we cannot think of proving its 
actual validity. 

Now, in the first place, it should be remembered 
that 'freedom' and 'causality' are not absolutely 
opposed to each other, but are compatible with 
each other ; that is to say, the former would pos- 
tulate the latter, but of course the latter would 
not the former. For every free beginning of an 
action must demand that, in the world into which 
it intends to introduce an event a, all Things 
cohere firmly and according to law ; so that from 
a only the intended result z can follow, and not 
any other at pleasure. Consequently ' freedom ' is 
only to be accepted in the sense of an influence 
upon a world causally ordered. 

Since however the free action ought to be sub- 
jected to an ethical judgment, it must be added 
that the decision with respect also to what is 
'good' or 'bad/ is made in entire independence 
of the will. Therefore, freedom also is to be 
accepted only in the sense of a choice between 



POSSIBILITY OF UNCONDITIONED CHOICE. IO3 

what has value and what has not value, — perma- 
nently, and for its own sake. 

The further objection, — namely that a freedom, 
in the sense intended by us, that is in the disrep- 
utable sense of a completely ' unconditioned ' choice 
between a and non-a, is in respect of the process 
of its action incomprehensible, — is likely to be mis- 
understood : it does not raise a special obstacle 
such as positively to prohibit the conception of 
freedom, but simply and absolutely denies its valid- 
ity. For, assuming that there is freedom, it is 
involved in its very conception, that the process of 
the decision it makes cannot be a ' comprehen- 
sible ' one ; because this would presuppose that the 
decision follows as the consequence of a succes- 
sion of reciprocally conditioning circumstances, and 
therefore does not follow freely. If now offence 
is still taken at this incomprehensibility of freedom, 
it may be borne in mind, that the process of causal 
action would be no less obscure, and the fact of 
something effectuating something else, as regards 
its succession of events, just as incomprehensible. 

If then it is still argued, that at all events such 
a capacity of choosing arbitrarily and blindly be- 
tween a and non-a is irrational and unworthy of 
any respect, it is to be considered that we in 
fact neither commend nor venerate the 'freedom ' 



104 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

that has not yet decided. It is only the ' will ' 
which is no longer free, but has made its decision, 
that merits commendation or censure. ' Freedom ' 
is simply the conditio sine qua non for the possibility 
of the subsequent valuation of the determinate 
act of willing. 

For although we may concede that it is just the 
volition itself which we commend or censure, while 
we do not demand that this volition itself be re- 
peated once more, still we after all tacitly pre- 
suppose in such a case, that just this ' volition ' 
from the very outset has the significance of a 
decision sprung from 'freedom.' If this is denied 
us, and the will is defined as an emotion which 
originates mechanically within us, then we deny 
that ethical predicates are at all applicable to the 
will as a mere process of nature. 

On the other hand it is objected, that the Good 
ought to be chosen for its own sake, but not in an 
entirely arbitrary manner : a blind freedom there- 
fore would be just as little conducive to actions 
which may be judged ethically. In reply to this 
it is to be observed, that we can never speak of a 
' blind ' will ; since all volition belongs to the same 
spiritual subject, which on the other hand is en- 
dowed likewise with the consciousness of the pos- 
sible modes of its action and of their values. If 



VARYING INFLUENCE OF WILL. 105 

such a subject in possession of this consciousness 
makes a choice, its choice at all events is not 
1 blind.' But there is no necessity for apprehending 
the presence in consciousness of the correct esti- 
mate of the possible modes of action as at the 
same time a determining influence which neces- 
sarily conditioned the direction of the will. 

One difficulty however remains. The act of voli- 
tion, although itself not causally conditioned, would 
still, if there is to be any corresponding result, 
be obliged to have a varying influence upon the 
existing states of the mind. And now the ques- 
tion comes, as to the means that determined the 
intensity with which the ' freely ' originated will 
either overcomes the states of passion that strug- 
gle against it, or else yields to them. It would 
be a somewhat sophistical piece of information 
to affirm unqualifiedly that only the volition, but 
not the accomplishment of it is free ; and indeed 
to carry this to such extent, that not only the pos- 
sibility of the execution of an external action when 
willed would be doubtful, but that even the inner 
states of the mind also would form for the will a 
sort of external world, in which it could validate 
itself only in case the states of the same are more- 
over in harmony with its demands. 

In a somewhat indefinite form this thought ap- 



106 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

pears in the sphere of religion : we pray God to 
grant strength to the well-disposed but weak will ; 
we therefore certainly ascribe volition to the hu- 
man spirit, and only doubt about its needful 
power. 

A decisive judgment upon this question it is 
hardly possible to find. To assume an entirely 
free i volition' and to include in the conception 
of it its complete ineffectiveness seems almost 
absurd : on the contrary the other extreme opin- 
ion is a very bold one and hardly to be accepted ; 
namely, that just as the will freely determines its 
own direction, so also is it able to determine its 
own intensity, and that it is always the willing 
spirit's own fault, if it has too little intensity of 
volition to overcome the involuntary psychical im- 
pulses to action. 

§ 62. According to the entire foregoing discus- 
sion, acceptance or rejection of freedom will ulti- 
mately be a matter of decision, and not the result 
of a theoretical demonstration. 

It is only on the assumption, that we do not 
hold the speculative difficulties which we encounter 
to be insuperable, and that we therefore believe in 
the freedom of spiritual beings, that there is any 
further interest in discussing the conception of a 
government of the world. 



GOVERNMENT AND PRESERVATION. 107 

Government, in contradistinction to Preservation, 
could only consist in immediate influences of God 
upon the order of nature, such as were not included 
in the proper consequences of this order. And 
these influences could only be occasioned by the 
free actions which threaten to turn the prog- 
ress of the world's course aside from a prescribed 
line. 

Such divine influences are comprehended under 
the name of Miracles. 

In order to estimate this conception, it must 
not be defined as an abolition of the order of 
nature in general, or of the general laws of na- 
ture. For then the conception would not at all 
correspond to what we mean by it. ' General ' su- 
spension of the ' laws of nature ' would only occa- 
sion a chaos which is utterly beyond the power 
of representation. 

The ' miracle ' however is supposed to be a 
definite event, in which, in a single instance and 
with reference to definite things and for definite 
moments, the physical laws are invalidated which, 
contemporaneously or previously and subsequently, 
continued to be valid with respect to all other 
things. 

This however means nothing but that the nature 
a of some one element experiences a change into 



108 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

a, by which it now no longer falls under the do- 
main of the natural law g, but under that of an- 
other y ; and in consequence of this it no longer 
produces the ordinary effect, but another and ex- 
traordinary one. According to this definition, there- 
fore, the miracle in general would involve no 
alteration whatever of the laws of nature, but 
only the change of one or more magnitudes to 
which those laws are applied. 

Now it cannot be disputed, that such a change 
of the natures of single elements by the influence 
of a divine intervention is just as thinkable as it 
would be if accomplished by the intervention of 
another, and that a physical force. And particu- 
larly under the presupposition, that the Things of 
nature are not independent, but are products con- 
stantly supported by a divine power, does this 
general conception of the miracle contain, on the 
one hand, all that can be demanded in the re- 
ligious interest, and, on the other, nothing that 
would be theoretically contradictory or impossible. 

§ 63. There is no cause for overmuch rejoicing 
on account of this proof of the mere abstract 
conceivableness of the miracle. On the contrary 
it must be lamented, that we lack every decisive 
scientific regulative for determining the limits, 



MIRACLES AS RELATED TO SPIRITS. IOO, 

within which we may have confidence in this 
possibility of thought, as valid in actuality. Only 
very indefinite thoughts upon this question admit 
of being presented. 

That the order of nature for its own sake is in 
need of no corrections, is obvious. And the 
changes, which the free actions of spirits are able 
to produce in it, are so narrowly limited and may 
be so easily compensated for by the general 
economy of nature, that even for their sake 
' miraculous ' interventions are incredible. 

Although, on the other hand, we feel a certain 
aesthetic inclination to behold great crises of 
history, in which a new phase of spiritual devel- 
opment has its beginning, made glorious by 
extraordinary changes of physical conditions also ; 
still we must acknowledge that we can prove 
neither the necessity nor the real benefit which 
would result from satisfying our fancy by this 
summons of the miraculous. 

It seems therefore, that it is not at all nature 
directly, but primarily the inner life of the world 
of spirits only, that forms the object, to which 
immediate interventions in the government of the 
world could have relation ; and this in such manner 
that the interventions would not make use of the 
individual spirits merely as passive points of tran- 



IIO PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

sition, but would supply their own activity with 
inducements and incentives, which the external 
course of nature cannot offer them. Moreover, 
by means of these inducements and incentives 
they would succeed, in accordance with the ordi- 
nary laws of the spiritual life, in introducing into 
the world new beginnings of spiritual movement 
that are in conformity with the plan of the world. 
If in these events we include among others re- 
ligious visions also, then we do not conceive them 
to be, as Rationalism does, merely subjective delu- 
sions to which nothing in external nature, and 
consequently nothing whatever corresponds. On 
the contrary, we think of them as products of a 
reciprocal action of God with individual spirits by 
means of which there is brought to pass in them 
an ideal appearance of a truly valid content ; and 
this content would gain nothing whatever in dig- 
nity, value or reality, if it were realized, not 
merely as such appearance, but as physical or ma- 
terial actuality besides. 

§ 64. Accordingly it is impossible speculatively 
to determine, how far within the limits of proba- 
bility, faith in the applicability of the not essen- 
tially impossible conception of miracle ought to 
be extended. 



HISTORY NOT MERE DEVELOPMENT. Ill 

The entire thought however, in which the in- 
clination towards this faith has its source, is still 
further in harmony with the idea of a history for 
the world in which we come to participate with 
God in some common experience. And while 
this is something which is determined in accord- 
ance with his most general plan, it is still in its 
details by no means the mere result of original 
predestination. It is therefore not merely ' de- 
velopment ' according to the law of reason and 
consequent, but actual history ; and this history is 
without exception found only where general laws 
or a general plan are not executed with perfect 
constancy, but in alternate action with innumerable 
lawless obstacles or free counteractions. 

This summing-up of actuality into a history which 
has beginning, middle and end, is very natural 
to all religions. And yet there are no doubt dif- 
ficulties involved in such an idea in itself con- 
sidered. 

That is to say, it seems to us at first as if the 
proper determination of actuality consists in the 
historical actualization of a " world-aim " or in the 
struggle toward it. And with this understanding 
of the matter, it is altogether natural to regard the 
creation, the history of the world, and the judg- 
ment of the world, as three successive acts of such 



112 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

a concluded drama. But upon closer consideration 
after all this view is in contradiction to our 
needs. 

If the world was created in time, so that reckon- 
ing from this (present) moment a retrogressive 
cognition should, after a finite number of steps, 
discover its beginning, then we are troubled by the 
emptiness of infinite time before this beginning ; 
and we know of nothing with which to fill it out. 
For even the thought of a solitary preexistence of 
God is an obscure one, supposing that the creation 
of the world is made to originate from an act of 
the will of God, which could have no need of this 
preparatory period either for its origination or for 
its execution. 

Just so if the judgment of the world is the 
conclusion of history, it certainly cannot be under- 
stood to mean that the created actuality would 
now vanish again into nothingness. Rather is it 
only by this judgment of the world that there is 
established an order of things which fulfils the 
aim of the world, and which would then naturally 
be perpetuated ad infinitum as the actuality of 
that which ought to be ; — and this without ex- 
periencing any further history of that development, 
which would now be superfluous. . 

Such considerations convince us that the idea 



THE PERIODS OF THE WORLD. II3 

of these three successive periods of Beginning, 
Realization and Completion of an aim, — derived 
as it is from our human endeavors, — is not ap- 
plicable to the totality of the world. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE ' WORLD-AIM.' 

§ 65. The conception of a 'world-aim,' which, 
according to the remarks we have just made, would 
not be realized all at once at the conclusion of a 
history, but progressively in the course of the 
world, we have simply introduced without any 
question as to its validity. Speculatively it is by 
no means to be demonstrated ; it continues to be 
perfectly possible to think of the course of the 
world as an entirely purposeless, although more 
or less living development of an Absolute. 

But religious feeling has an immediate evidence 
that the case is not so, and that all the phenomena 
of inspiration, of adoration, and of the feeling of 
obligation to an ideal, are not explicable as casual 
effects in the development of a purposeless Prin- 
ciple. 

But if the conception of a supreme aim for 
the world is once acknowledged, then the other 
ideas, which form its necessary points of relation, 
comport with it ; and especially the idea of a per- 
sonal God, in whose consciousness and will alone 
this aim, previous to its full accomplishment, can 



PLACE OF THE SUPREME AIM. II5 

have any actuality by means of which it becomes 
effective as guiding principle for the course of 
the world itself. To this subject however we are 
not going to return. The most urgent question 
is, wherein are we to place this ' supreme aim.' 

§ 66. The answer to the foregoing question is 
to this extent self-evident, that naturally this aim 
cannot be placed in the realization of a fact, with 
respect to which the further question were possi- 
ble ; why just this, and not other conceivable 
aims of like nature, is to fill this supremely 
exalted position in the world. The aim must 
obviously be that which has supreme value, and 
with respect to which the aforesaid question 
becomes senseless. 

Now as to what this aim is, the common, unphil- 
osophical religious view is not at all uncertain : 
nothing but the conception of blessedness seems 
to it to express this value, with respect to which 
it is absurd to raise the question, why this and 
why nothing else constitutes the supreme aim. 
It may be incidentally remarked, that the exist- 
ence of a world of spirits is connected with the 
foregoing view as something conceivable. For only 
such a world could contain the subjects whose states 
this supreme aim may be conceived to be. On the 



Il6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

other hand, this view by no means also furnishes 
at once an explanation of the existence of this 
determinate, z/zanimate world. 

§ 67. The above-mentioned view is combated in 
vain from the side of an ethical Rigorism, which, 
through its well-known undervaluation of all 'pleas- 
ure/ always in the practical domain, regards noth- 
ing but disinterested obedience to the universal 
commands of duty as ethical ; and therefore in 
the religious domain also would not in any case 
be disposed to acknowledge ' supreme blessedness ' 
as the final purpose of the world, — perhaps not, 
with any readiness, even as a tolerable conse- 
quence of that purpose. 

With respect to this point we briefly remark 
as follows : If obedience or disobedience to an 
ethical law were to occasion not a trace of pleas- 
ure or pain to any sensitive being in the world, 
— whether God, angels, or men, — it would be 
utterly incomprehensible, why it is just the obedi- 
ence and not the disobedience to the law that 
must have an obligatory force ; since after all 
the effects of the two modes of conduct consist 
only in the production of different states of fact, 
one of which would be as indifferent as the other. 

In a word, it is impossible to understand what 



THE NATURE OF THE GOOD. 1 17 

is to constitute the ' value ' of any action, if its 
results are not able to produce some 'Good' some- 
where in the world, or to increase the sum of 
already existing 'Good.' But while we designate 
Things, States and Events as ' Good,' it is after 
all only in so far as they are means for obtain- 
ing the only real and substantial ' Good ' ; and 
this latter always exists only in the pleasure of 
some, sensitive spirit, and would vanish with the 
world of spirits completely from the realm of ac- 
tuality. 

No Ethics can avoid having regard to a pur- 
pose that is final and in itself of absolute value. 
No matter to what extent many rigorous systems 
formulate their highest ethical laws apparently 
without any such regard, still, in addition to the 
assurances that they are the highest laws, the 
conclusion must always be supplied : What then 
would be the result, if these laws were not obeyed ? 

§ 68. The foregoing assertions do not degrade 
morals. It is not meant by them, that the direct 
endeavor after happiness — and that, too, after one's 
own happiness — should be the ethically praise- 
worthy motive of our action. On this point our 
conscience gives us sufficient instruction ; since 
it interprets this endeavor as in itself considered 



Il8 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

indifferent and merely natural, but on the con- 
trary interprets as ethically laudable only the 
endeavor to secure the happiness of others. Thus 
(as might be further proved) the command of 
' benevolence ' is, among all ethical commands, 
really the fundamental one ; and only upon the 
assumption of it do all the rest receive their ob- 
ligatory value. 

On the other hand, in seeking a coherent view 
of the world, we have a speculative interest in the 
fact that the ethical commands, which we are able 
in practice to obey without any further question 
as to their origin, are not wholly lacking in co- 
herence with the arrangement of the world. 

That such arrangement therefore be reckoned to 
the account of the final purpose of blessedness, is 
a speculative claim, which we set up in the in- 
terest, to a certain extent, of our reverence for 
the world, but not for the satisfaction of our own 
wishes for happiness. We are naturally unable to 
avoid including our own welfare also in this com- 
prehensive final purpose. 

The foregoing are perhaps the incentives which 
in religious thought have led to this doctrine of 
blessedness. From these incentives are distin- 
guished, and not to their advantage, at least as 
regards the intention, the philosophical systems 



BLESSEDNESS AS AN ABSTRACT NOTION. I 19 

which only in a practical way set up claims upon 
our obedience to universal ethical laws, but specu- 
latively give us no enlightenment with respect to 
the ultimate end, to which properly this ceaseless 
expenditure of ethical energy is to lead. 

§ 69. Certainly, the laudation alluded to above 
holds good only of the intention and not of the 
performance of this religious opinion. It is wrecked 
rather in the attempt, actually to deduce the neces- 
sity of the present world from the supreme purpose 
of blessedness. 

The first objection certainly might be disre- 
garded ; namely, why this purpose could be accom- 
plished at all only as a result of a course of the 
world, and why it could not be accomplished as 
well from the very beginning. At the foundation 
of such a question there really lies the logical error 
of regarding the conception of ' blessedness ' or of 
1 pleasure in general ' in this universal sense of it, 
as something realizable. But the 'pleasure' that 
is without content can no more exist than a sen- 
sation of ' color in general,' which were neither 
green nor blue. Every ' pleasure ' is rather an 
altogether determinate one, which is distinguished, 
as to its intensity and coloring, from others, and in 
both respects is determined by the nature of the 
content of which it is an enjoyment. 



120 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

Hence it may be made evident, that we are 
utterly unable to form any real idea of a blessed- 
ness without content, although we can form the 
name of it ; that it is capable of realization rather 
only upon the supposition that there are actual 
relations of some sort, which constitute the object 
of enjoyment in this pleasure ; and, finally, that 
even these relations cannot be as they will, but 
together must form an orderly arrangement of the 
world. 

But no progress is made in the foregoing way ; 
the postulates which are set up with respect to 
such an arrangement of the world, are always after 
all general and abstract. That they had to be 
realized now by means of just these substances, 
forces, organisms, and kinds of occurrence, which 
we discover empirically in the world, is in nowise 
to be proved. 

Wonder at the fact that so many other kinds 
of existence were still possible, which however do 
not exist, can be modified but imperfectly by the 
intimation that our range of experience is narrow, 
and that perhaps there are realized in the extra- 
earthly world all the possibilities which we miss 
upon the surface of the earth. For since we have 
reason to think that the most general physical laws, 
which are valid with us, are valid also for all distant 



THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL. 121 

parts of the world, therefore the organizations also 
which are there found can only be such as are in 
accordance with these laws. There always remains 
as conceivable, however, an infinite manifoldness 
that might exist, if those laws were only different. 
We are therefore brought round to the new 
question : Why are the laws of nature, which are 
not necessities of thought but empirical, precisely 
as they are and not otherwise ? This question is 
unanswerable ; and in our religious faith we must 
be content to think of the given world as in 
fact called to the realization of the supreme pur- 
pose, without being able to investigate any further 
the grounds of this calling. 

§ 70. The existence of evil in the world — and 
that too primarily of mere physical evil — brings 
our general assumptions still further into inex- 
plicable contradiction with our data of facts. 

It is sufficient to indicate in a word, how utterly 
fruitless are those ways of speaking which seek 
to apologize for evil by recognizing it only " in 
particulars," but maintaining " the harmony of 
the world as a whole." One needs only to reverse 
these utterances : " On the whole the world makes 
a beautiful figure indeed, but in particulars it is 
wretched," — in order to understand that such ex- 



122 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

pressions give evidence merely of the good inten- 
tion of the apology, but specify no ground for 
such an apology. 

Moreover the assertion of that " harmony on the 
whole " is in fact by no means whatever to be 
demonstrated. We merely know that the world 
does not perish on account of its imperfections, 
but that both it and they continue together. 

§ 71. All efforts to attain to clearness upon the 
above-mentioned subject, can only try to apologize 
for the evil that does not admit of being done 
away with by denial. 

The first onset for this purpose consists in the 
assumption that evil is necessary ; in other words 
that God, although having in view only the High- 
est Good, has nevertheless been bound in his 
creation to laws which have not permitted the un- 
conditioned Good, but only the choice of the best 
world among many, all of which were imperfect. 

The limitation of the divine Omnipotence which 
is involved in this view, might be tolerated to a 
certain extent, if the aforesaid general laws were 
really understood to be simply the eternal truths, 
which, as we saw, are nothing extraneous to God, 
but are only the proper modus agendi of his own 
spiritual activity. But there is nothing whatever 



THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 123 

in the whole world by which to prove that these 
eternal truths were to blame for the evils that 
are in the world. So far as we are in any way 
empirically acquainted with the course of things, 
and are able, according to its analogy, to judge 
of non-realized possibilities, an absolutely faultless 
world would not be at all inconsistent with those 
'eternal truths.' The ground of evil, so far as 
we know, lies rather in those special facts and 
arrangements, which are in actual existence, but 
instead of which there might as well be others 
that were also on friendly terms with the afore- 
said truths and yet would not lead to these evils. 

Since now we must attribute the establishment 
of these special actualities to the creative will of 
God, the attempt in this way to make the origin 
of evil independent of the divine will would not 
succeed ; for his omnipotence would have still 
further to be so limited that even the actual ele- 
ments of the world and their original combina- 
tions would be regarded as something taken for 
granted, in the midst of which God would have 
to find himself existing, and from which He then 
would have to endeavor to secure the best result 
still possible (Leibnitz). 

This would be not only a degradation of our 
conception of God from a religious point of view, 



124 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

but it would also be speculatively fruitless. For 
in order that the measurable influence upon the 
world, which is still attributed to such a God, 
might be able to exist at all, a second superior 
God would have to be assumed, who, in the 
manner previously discussed (§§ 16 ff.), would com- 
prehend both of these now mutually indifferent 
members in one reciprocal action, and would pre- 
vail upon them to act upon each other. 

§ 72. After the foregoing explanation which is 
intended as metaphysical, there is one of a peda- 
gogic sort, that regards evil as a means of Good, 
that is of education and improvement. 

But in the first place this view merely contem- 
plates men, who alone are capable of education. 
But in the animal world as well physical evils 
appear ; and that not at all in a sporadic manner, 
but so systematized that the terrible torture and 
destruction of one class of creatures by the rest 
belongs directly to the so-called order of Nature. 
No pedagogic can make this comprehensible. We 
can much sooner comprehend how earlier times in 
despair over this very fact set a ' bad Principle ' 
in a dualistic manner over against the Good. 

But even leaving this out of the account, — 
any education makes use of evil simply because 



MORAL AND PHYSICAL EVIL. 125 

the minds which it intends to affect, are psycho- 
logically so defectively organized, that without 
this intrinsically objectionable means the end 
would no longer be realized. If it were applied 
to the entire world, it would lead back to the 
previous thought : God did not have it in his 
power to make the world so perfect that it 
would attain its end without corrections by 
means of evil. 

§ 73. A view which has been elaborated rather 
in a religious and mystical way, regards the mor- 
ally Bad as prior and physical evil as a consequence 
of its becoming actual. 

Now the circumstance that the truly Good was 
not to be actualized without the possibility of the 
Bad, and therefore that the freedom of the world 
of spirits was to be conceded, we can consider 
as a necessity which need >not be foreign even 
to God's own nature. But after all we do not 
understand, why the bad disposition which entered 
the world in consequence of such freedom needed 
to have any physical result at all ; and why the 
danger which it threatened to the undisturbed 
continuance of the world, was not averted by 
one of those self-compensations, by means of 
which so frequently elsewhere in nature the be- 



126 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

ginning of a disturbed equipoise cancels itself 
again. 

The necessary existence of freedom would there- 
fore by no means show that the innocent must 
suffer by its misuse. But in addition to this also 
the view does not cover the whole question. 

For the further assumption that nature was 
originally without evil and that sin first brought 
it into the world, not only lacks all empirical 
foundation, but is even in itself considered un- 
tenable. We cannot, just because individual spirits, 
or even very many of them, erred, regard ' sin ' as 
a unit-principle or a power which would have a 
legitimate influence upon the course of nature in 
general ; still less is it to be understood, why na- 
ture did not endeavor to overcome singly the dis- 
turbances which the sin that is foreign to it had 
introduced, instead of admitting physical evils, as 
a kind of solidaric totality, into the very plan of 
its operations. 

The incomprehensibleness of the foregoing views 
is not lessened by their being proclaimed with still 
greater emphasis ; thus, for example, by speaking 
of a " voluntary fall of the entire creation " which 
now extends "the curse of its imperfection to all 
creatures that still spring from it." In whatever 
way the picture may be painted, to attribute this 



EVIL AN INSOLVABLE ENIGMA. 12J 

act of a 'fall' to the collective conception of a 
creation means after all nothing whatever. It is 
intelligible only as regards each particular, indi- 
vidual, free and conscious being. But if we refer 
it to such a being, then it is a perfect monstrosity, 
at variance with the simplest sense of justice, to 
assume that the consequences of this act pass 
over, as an inheritance which it is impossible to 
shake off, to all later generations, although they 
are according to their very conception destined 
to like 'freedom.' 

In very different forms have Mythology, Mysti- 
cism and Dogmatics represented such a primaeval 
history of the world. But none of these attempts 
has been able to eliminate the aforesaid manifest 
incongruities. 

§ 74. The above-mentioned incapacity of our spec- 
ulative cognition for the solution of this enigma of 
evil had to be very plainly expressed. For there 
ought not to remain any seeming as if there were, in 
expressions which cannot be understood and which 
only commend themselves to the imagination through 
intuitive images, any real speculative proof for the 
correctness of the religious feeling upon which 
rests our faith in a good and holy God, and in the 
destination of the world to the attainment of a 
blessed end. 



128 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

He who does not share this religious conviction, 
may, on account of these last considerations of 
ours, very easily from a speculative point of view- 
reach that Pessimism, which is just now the order 
of the day, and for which there will be on specu- 
lative grounds no refutation. But this Pessimism, 
which reverts to the thought of an original energy 
without will, that produces the Good and the Bad 
alike without design, is not a profound view but is 
just that cheap and superficial kind of view, by 
which all enigmas are conveniently disposed of — 
by simply sacrificing all that is most essential and 
supreme to the unprejudiced mind. 

In contrast with this Pessimism, the more diffi- 
cult problem is the firm confidence that, in spite 
of all that is incomprehensible to us, the striving 
after a supreme end is at all events extant in the 
world. For this confidence takes upon itself the 
great and ever unavoidable task of always making 
renewed attempts to fill the gap which lies be- 
tween this content of our faith and our actual 
experiences. 

If we call every attempt of this sort in thought 
or action ' Religion,' then ' religion ' is never ex- 
actly a demonstrable theorem, but the conviction 
of its truth is a deed that is to be accredited to 
character. 



CHAPTER IX. 



RELIGION AND MORALITY. 



§ 75. If there is no speculative argument for 
religious conviction, still there must be a motive 
for holding fast this conviction. And in fact an 
appeal has constantly been made to an ' immediate 
inner experience,' which attests the truth of the 
content of religion, as directly and independently 
of the intervention of logic as perception by the 
senses attests the reality of external objects. It 
has already been said in the Introduction however, 
that there by no means exists an harmonious 
inner experience as regards that divine order of 
the world which is not perceivable by the senses ; 
but rather that (compare also § 59) the only ele- 
ment common to men, to which an appeal may 
be made for the confirmation of religion, consists 
in those ' utterances of the conscience ' that pri- 
marily only say what ought to be, and yet after 
all permit an indirect inference from this as to 
what is. 

§ 76. There are different ways of apprehend- 
ing this real function of the ' conscience ' also. 



130 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

It must be acknowledged that the conscience 
is not, prior to all experience, a coherent revela- 
tion of the commands to which our future conduct 
ought to conform ; the rather is it like our capa- 
city of cognition. The supreme principles to 
which this capacity reduces its judgment of 
Things, are also no original ready-made posses- 
sion of our consciousness. Particular perceptions 
rather induce us, in the first place, as a sort of 
immediate reaction, to effect their combination so 
as to give them a definite significance. It is 
only subsequent reflection upon many such par- 
ticular cases, that shows us in accordance with 
what ' principles ' our conduct, which was pre- 
viously only instinctive, has proceeded. And 
now for the first time are they conscious prin- 
ciples, to which we conform in our subsequent 
cognition. 

Just so ' conscience ' is first induced, by consid- 
ering cases that are quite definite, to pass par- 
ticular judgments of approval or disapproval upon 
actions which are brought before it. It is only 
by reflective comparison of these particular judg- 
ments, that there is formed from them those 
general ethical precepts, which it is then cus- 
tomary to designate as the 'immediate voice of 
conscience.' 



THE VIEW OF EGOISM. I3I 

§ 77. This necessary concession with respect to 
the psychological development of our conscience, 
is now made use of to support in the first place 
a view, which annuls the obligatory value and the 
proper majesty of ethical commands. 

It is the view, namely, that the sensibility 
which induces the spirit to approve or disapprove 
of some definite act itself rests in turn merely 
upon the immediate well-being or ill-being, which 
the spirit experiences from it. When however 
this sensibility proceeds to the formation of gen- 
eral propositions, it comprises only those maxims, 
constant obedience to which experience has taught 
secures on the average the highest degree and 
steadiest permanence of that well-being which is 
at all attainable. All ethical commands accord- 
ingly appear merely as maxims of that Egoism 
which seeks its own self-preservation ; they appear 
however as general laws simply for the reason 
that the limitation of our cognition of the past, 
present and future, does not in every case permit 
that mode of action which is specially suited to 
these different periods, for the attainment of the 
highest possible good. 

To this entire mode of apprehending the sub- 
ject we must now concede this one point, — 
namely, that the mere experience of human inter- 



132 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

course certainly may furnish us with the concrete 
and determinate particular content of those pre- 
cepts, in conforming to which ethical behavior 
consists ; and that, on the other hand, all at- 
tempts in a reverse direction to deduce those 
specialized precepts from the general conceptions 
of the Good, the Ethical, the Holy, or the Just, 
are in vain. Such general conceptions express 
nothing whatever but the peculiar character of 
the impression, which definite kinds of conduct 
will make upon our feelings, as soon as we shall 
become acquainted with them : on the other hand, 
they do not acquaint us with just those forms of 
the conduct itself, to which this impression will 
apply. 

§ 78. A disposition which insists upon endeavor- 
ing to find in ethical precepts nothing but pru- 
dential maxims acquired by experience, and to find 
back of all actions nothing but egoistic motives, can 
in no way be gainsaid by mere speculation. So 
much only is clear, namely, that such an interpre- 
tation of moral commands is arbitrary. For in that 
case also, supposing us to assume that a worth 
and sacredness of their own belongs to these com- 
mands, everything would still be exactly the same. 
That is to say, these commands would in fact be 



THE VIEW OF EGOISM. 1 33 

the maxims, conforming to which produces the 
greatest amount of happiness. The content more- 
over of that which they command would always 
be learned first by experience, as was previously 
mentioned. And for just this reason it would always 
be possible to represent them as though they were 
nothing more than such lessons of experience with 
respect to what is expedient. 

But on the other hand, he who prefers this 
interpretation overlooks the fact, that we all of us 
none the less set over against the conduct which 
simply conforms to these maxims of prudence, 
another of an altogether different sort, as being 
the only one of value ; and this latter conduct con- 
forms to these same maxims, although with differ- 
ent sentiments ; and indeed with such sentiments 
as either have disinterested regard to the estab- 
lishment of the Good, in precisely the same way, 
for instance, in which we reverence beauty as having 
objective value without advantage to ourselves — 
or else with such sentiments as find happiness, so 
far as they make the production of it an object 
of pursuit, only in benevolence towards others and 
not in selfishness. 

This also may be. denied ; but in denying it 
there is involved the denial of an inner experience, 
upon the acknowledgment of which every further 



134 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

upward flight of religion depends. Conversely, 
therefore, it will not be possible to gainsay those 
who are conscious of this inner experience. 

§ 79. But even the recognition of the peculiar 
worth and sacredness of ethical commands does not 
lead at once to a religious view of the world ; on the 
contrary this recognition, in ancient as well as mod- 
ern times, has been put in express opposition to 
religious thoughts, which seemed like a needless 
and false supplement to it. It is not to be denied, 
that practically even this Stoicism, or the Rational- 
ism which disdains any connection with religion, 
may, by mere subordination to the general demands 
of morality and of the course of the world, furnish 
the basis for a conduct of life well deserving of rec- 
ognition. But there are involved in this conception 
(compare § 68) peculiar speculative contradictions. 

It is maintained in the first place, that all 
thoughts about an origin at some time or other, 
or about an ultimate aim of moral laws, are to be 
avoided, because they could only serve to corrupt 
the conception of the peculiar sacredness and un- 
conditioned obligation of these laws, which demand 
rather an altogether immediate -recognition as being 
absolutely obligatory. Worthy of respect as is the 
sentiment which is thus expressed, yet the specu- 



AN 'UNCONDITIONED OUGHT. 135 



lative thought, by which it would like to sustain 
itself, is utterly unserviceable. Laws that are com- 
pletely unconditioned may be conceived of, so far 
forth as they in fact govern all actuality, like the 
laws of nature, and are consequently expressions of 
a 'must' which knows no exceptions. On the con- 
trary the thought of an ' unconditioned Ought,' that 
is, of a law to which actuality in no wise of itself 
corresponds, is incomprehensible. 

There must be a difference between the reality 
of that which ought to be and of that which ought 
not to be ; and this difference cannot consist in 
the mere repetition of these two antithetical predi- 
cates. Rather must the very consideration, that the 
one ought to be and the other ought not to be, 
have a practical validity. In other words and more 
simply : An unconditioned ' Ought ' is unthinkable ; 
and only a conditioned Ought is possible, which 
attaches advantages and disadvantages to the ob- 
servance or non-observance of what is prescribed. 
These very consequences, however, may still con- 
sist ultimately only in pleasure or pain. And in 
this alone also consists the * absolute value,' as it is 
called, which the ideals of conduct designated by 
moral laws possess. A value, which is valued by 
no one, and therefore causes no one pleasure or 
pain, is, according to our previous explanation 
(§ 67), an essentially self-contradictory thought. 



I36 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

Now the advantage, which must be inseparably 
connected with the claim to validity for the moral 
laws, could be sought primarily in that immobility 
of feeling, that ataraxy, which Stoicism regards as 
the ideal of life for the wise man. But if this is 
commendable so far as it does not permit disturb- 
ance by the passions, still there is little that is 
commendable in its consequence, which would also 
exclude living enthusiasm for the Good and Beauti- 
ful, and would virtually degrade the feeling spirit 
to the form in which an impersonal substance ex- 
ists. The moral laws, however, so far as this 
ataraxy would be attained by observing them, would 
in fact still be mere maxims of utility, which would 
be designed for the attainment of a completely ego- 
istic well-being. 

It is manifestly, however, not this tranquillity 
of mind alone that has been in view as the ulti- 
mate goal and good, but the self-esteem which is 
secured by observance of the moral laws. Now 
this may without doubt be very well meant, but 
to say the least it is not compatible with the 
refusal of all further religious views. If we regard 
the individual personality as only a product of 
nature, which transiently appears and then van- 
ishes, it is not possible to understand just why 
we attach any value to the fact that what we 



PRINCIPLES OF ALL RELIGION. 1 37 

revere as good and holy must have its realization 
in just such an ' Ego ' as this. Self-esteem also 
would therefore be immediately intelligible as an 
ultimate goal only in case it were brought under 
the conception of that which ministers to our 
egoistic well-being, in the same way as does 
every sensuous satisfaction. It would be possi- 
ble for it to have a different significance only in 
case our view of our own personality, and of its 
position in the totality of the world be changed. 

§ 80. The foregoing reflections, which con- 
fessedly have not the value of demonstrations in 
the proper sense, but are merely intended to 
make us sensible of the connection by which 
the particular thoughts here mentioned, first get 
their complete satisfaction, lead us now to three 
propositions which we may regard as the character- 
istic convictions of every religious apprehension, in 
contradistinction to a merely intellectual view of 
the world, — namely : 

(1) Ethical laws we designate as the will of God ; 

(2) Individual finite spirits we designate not as 
products of nature, but as children of God ; 

(3) Actuality we designate not as a mere course 
of the world, but as a kingdom of God. These 
three propositions are to be elucidated and their 
consequences investigated. 



I38 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

§ 81. The first of the above-mentioned propo- 
sitions has raised objections, which ultimately 
lead to the well-known scholastic alternative : ' Is 
the Good good, because God wills it ? or docs 
He will it, because it is good ? ' This point is 
to be decided according to the analogy of the 
similar question as to the validity of eternal 
truths. 

If one would answer the first member of the 
alternative in the affirmative, the question would 
be asked : What then is comprehended under the 
thought of that God, who appears here as the sub- 
ject of this will? He would be nothing but an 
infinite Power, as yet wholly devoid of content ; 
and the affirmation, that He has willed the Good 
(if it meant a determination of will issued in time, 
quite as much as if it declared this will, to be one 
without beginning and eternal) would really be 
precisely identical with the other assertion, — 
namely, the Good is assumed to be once for all in 
existence, and a ' positing ' or ' affirming,' wholly 
without origin, is the basis of this assumption. 
It is moreover obvious, that every such deed of 
mere power, while it may. impart necessity, cannot 
impart worth to the command. 

But then, on the other hand, it is just as fruitless 
to assert that God wills the Good because it is 



GOD THE INTRINSICALLY GOOD. 1 39 

'intrinsically good.' For, to say nothing about 
the ambiguity of this latter expression, an ac- 
knowledgment of the Good, which is not a merely 
enforced decree in subordination to a statute, 
would after all be possible only in case the con- 
tent to be acknowledged already possesses for the 
nature of the acknowledging spirit the truth and 
the value which is to be awarded to it. 

We are convinced therefore, that the above- 
mentioned alternative separates again two thoughts, 
which must be thought together in absolute insep- 
arableness as the expression of a single fact ; and 
that we always run against absurdities, whenever 
we make one of these alternatives the condition 
for the other. 

We therefore come to the following decision : 
God is nothing else than that Will, whose con- 
tent and modes of procedure are comprehended in 
our reflection as the ' intrinsically Good ' ; and 
which may by abstraction be separated from that 
living form of existence which it nowhere else 
possesses but precisely in the real God. In truth, 
however, such will of God no more follows from 
his nature as secondary to it, or precedes it as 
primary to it, than in motion — say direction can 
be antecedent or subsequent to velocity. 

It is therefore an entire mistake to object that 



140 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

the peculiar majesty of moral laws suffers detri- 
ment if they are regarded as the will of God. For 
we take this view of the matter, not precisely 
with the design of laying, by the specification of 
their origin, a basis for that worth of those com- 
mands which we directly recognize ; but we do it 
in order to add to this worth — which, although 
it stands on its own foundation, we were neverthe- 
less obliged to regard speculatively as an incom- 
plete thought, — this supplement, by which, as we 
remarked, its worth is not enhanced but becomes 
intelligible and compatible with the totality of our 
view of the world. 

§ 82. As regards the second proposition "(§ 80), 
the somewhat sentimental way in which it is ex- 
pressed need not deceive us with respect to the 
weightiness of the thought. It has a twofold mean- 
ing. That is to say, on the one hand there is 
involved in it the recognition of the finiteness of 
the personal spirit and of its subjection to the 
power and wisdom of God. And herein is found 
the reason for that opposition which the Christian 
Religion especially has expressed against the pride 
of speculative systems of morality, that seek to 
attain as their ideal the self-satisfaction, self-esteem, 
and self -righteousness of the 'wise man.' 



RELATION OF MAN TO GOD. I4I 

The other part of this twofold meaning is the no 
less lively opposition to that depreciation of per- 
sonality, which sees in it merely a transient prod- 
uct of the course of nature. The assertion is 
therefore expressed in this connection, that there 
exists between man and God a relation of piety ; 
that this relation is always a vital one ; and that 
by means of it — but also only by means of it — 
the finite spirit ceases to be such absolutely de- 
pendent product of the course of nature. 

The hope of being loved by God, however, takes 
the place of mere self-satisfaction as the Highest 
Good. Such approval by the Supreme Spirit sup- 
plants the proud claim of having one's satisfaction 
in one's own self-esteem. 

§ 83. With relation to the third proposition 
(§ 80), we have already been obliged to confess that 
we do not know the content and plan of the divine 
government of the world : and the consequence of 
this with respect to religion is, that the entire con- 
sideration of external reality is withdrawn from its 
domain, and is regarded as an object for science, 
which has to ascertain its consistence by methods 
entirely free from prejudice, and therefore not at 
all influenced even by religious considerations. 
This attitude, too, is distinctive of Christianity. 



142 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

The religions of heathenism possess a mythology, 
which seeks to explain and interpret, in a very cir- 
cumstantial manner, the facts of reality. Chris- 
tianity has no mythology and rests all its reflec- 
tions entirely upon considerations of the spiritual 
world, of which we have an inner experience. 



CHAPTER X. 

DOGMAS AND CONFESSIONS. 

§ 84. Nothing more than the content of the three 
propositions already cited is in fact revealed, even 
by the Christian Revelation. To be penetrated by 
their influence, and to be voluntarily subject to the 
divine will, as they require, constitutes a living, 
consolatory religious state, — or religion as a condi- 
tion of mind. 

It is, nevertheless, quite impossible to avert 
attempts to transform this religious content, which 
was originally apprehended only in living presenti- 
ment, into a series of formulated and communicable 
propositions. 

To such attempts we are impelled on the one 
side by our own life-experience, which desires to 
answer the doubts that have arisen, not always by 
a mere appeal to the same frame of mind, but also 
by convictions that . enter upon the special content 
of the doubts raised. Under the name of religious 
Mysticism may be summed up the whole of these 
attempts at theory which are based exclusively upon 
one's own inner religious experience, and which 
also primarily claim no other validity than that 



144 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

which exists for the personal subject who finds 
out of the depth of his own mind the desired 
answers to those doubts. 

§ 85. Over against this first impulse stands a 
second. It is essentially self-contradictory for one 
to stand alone with his religious conviction, since 
it is just this condition which unites man to the 
entire universe. Religion is not merely union of 
the individual with God, but in and by this union 
it is at the same time union with all other men. 

In this impulse lies the one respectable root of 
religious Fanaticism. What we acknowledge as the 
Supreme, would not be such Supreme, unless it 
were acknowledged by all. Hence now there fol- 
lows, not the warrant to be sure to force one's 
subjective views upon others, but rather that need 
of a religious community — now so frequently mis- 
taken — within which each one finds again, not 
indeed the complete content of his own individual 
mysticism, but at least the outlines of the convic- 
tion to which he is able to subordinate or to attach 
his own. 

Such therefore is the necessity of generally ac- 
cepted Dogmas and Symbols. 



TWOFOLD DESIGN OF DOGMA. I45 

§ 86. Without doubt the historic development 
of such thoughts will embrace the content of 
religion more completely than the life-experience 
of an individual ; although this latter pervades with 
greater intensity that which has once become ob- 
ject of such personal experience. 

Generally accepted objective dogmas will there- 
fore have the twofold design, — on the one hand, 
to hold fast those solutions of doubt which have 
been gained in the course of time ; but, on the 
other hand, to designate certain outlines of thought 
beyond which our subjective fancies are not to go 
without exposing themselves to error. 

According to our previous considerations, no one 
of these dogmas would be, properly speaking, a 
speculatively or scientifically conclusive answer to 
a proposed question ; they would all be mere sym- 
bols rather, which acknowledge the existence of 
an enigma and which by means of an insufficient 
figurative designation only fix the limits of that 
range of thoughts, beyond which the fulfilment 
of such postulates must not be sought. 

It would therefore be reckoned a mistake for us 
to demand of the one who purposes to belong to a 
religious community, an obligation binding him to 
the literal purport of such dogmas. It is just ac- 
cording to their literal purport that they cannot be 



I46 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

objects of a confession or non-confession at all. In 
order that this question of confession may be raised, 
the dogmas need at all times an interpretation of 
their real meaning, — a meaning which they always 
indicate but 'imperfectly, by figures or symbols. 
Such interpretation however is not given objec^ 
tively, but each individual is in fact to find it by 
the activity of his own mind. 

It appears therefore that the only question to 
be put to the one who proposes to belong to a 
religious community is, whether he in his own 
heart experiences and confesses a religious truth, 
which admits of being comprehended as the im- 
port of this objectively formulated dogma, and 
which it is worth while to have acknowledged 
in this particular form as a bond of union for 
the religious conviction of a collective body. 

§ 87. It may be objected, that there is involved 
in this a sort of dissimulation. But above all 
things we do not maintain that religion and its 
dogmas are obligatory 'only for the uncultivated.' 
The truth of religion rather is absolutely valid for 
all alike ; on the contrary, the speculative expres- 
sions which have been discovered for it, are alto- 
gether inadequate. And for just this reason it is 
permitted to agree upon a formula, to which each 



INEXPRESSIBLE BUT TRUE RELATIONS. \/\J 

one gives that theoretical construction by which 
he believes its essential meaning is best compre- 
hended. 

In other departments of life also we are not 
able to discard methods of apprehending the 
world, which within the sphere of philosophy we 
nevertheless recognize as inadequate. The exist- 
ence of a space-world outside of us, the atoms, and 
the forces of matter, — all these are ideas, without 
the use of which not only the common understand- 
ing, but even philosophy, which denies their cor- 
rectness, would not be at all able to find its way 
in its observation and treatment of the external 
world. In all these cases it is not so much 
that we get at the truth, as that we get at such 
an intuitive 'seeming' as is able to make intelli- 
gible to us the essentially inexpressible, but true 
relations of the Actual. 

Just so in the case of religion it is not re- 
quired that there be found a speculatively unob- 
jectionable expression for that which is essentially 
Transcendent, but that we have figurative expres- 
sions to which the mind may attach the same 
feelings that are appropriate to the proper con- 
tent of religion. 

Now it is of course to be conceded that we 
could speak as simply as we do, only in case 



I48 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

these formulated dogmas were first to be estab- 
lished. They are however already in existence, 
and historically considered they are surely not in 
all cases so perfected, that they admit of no mis- 
understanding as to their true sense. But still 
this affords no reason for a wilful separation from 
those circles which acknowledge the dogmas ; it 
only involves a summons not to make of them 
subjects for theoretic instruction, as well as a 
problem of pastoral wisdom in combating the 
evils of a false interpretation. 

§ 88. The attempts at theory may be reduced to 
three divisions, the first of which only, Theology in 
the narrower sense, is sufficiently accessible to phi- 
losophy. 

We have endeavored in the preceding discussion 
to show, what more precise determinations of the 
Divine Being philosophy admits, what it excludes, 
and finally what it demands, without being able to 
present them in the form of adequate conceptions. 
As the total result of our discussion we repeat, 
that faith in a personal God contradicts none of 
those metaphysical convictions which we are com- 
pelled to maintain ; that, on the contrary, those 
assertions are entirely without foundation which, 
with decided incredulity as regards all that is re- 



THEOLOGY AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. I49 

ligious and with frivolous credulousness as regards 
the theories fashionable in physical science, conceive 
of an origin for spiritual life from the forces of 
mere matter ; and, finally, that the charge of an- 
thropomorphism is entirely unjust, for the distinc- 
tions between the infinite and the finite spirit are 
by no means overlooked. But it is certainly foolish 
to prefer to assign the Supreme Principle of the 
world to an unconscious blind substratum, the con- 
ception of which is for us, strictly speaking, some- 
thing completely dark and inscrutable. 

§ 89. Further speculations — as for example con- 
cerning the Trinity — would be, as regards the 
religious life, matters of complete indifference, but 
for the fact that they have been brought into con- 
nection with the position toward God, which the 
human race has come to occupy by means of the 
establishment or revelation of religion. The con- 
sideration in general of this position forms a sec- 
ond grand object of religious theories. 

According to the conviction maintained in this 
discussion as to the constant activity of God in the 
world and upon individual spirits ; and considering 
our acknowledged ignorance of the precise plan 
which the divine government follows ; there is noth- 
ing whatever that stands in opposition to the further 



I50 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

conviction that God, at particular moments and 
in particular persons, may have stood nearer to 
humanity, or may have revealed himself at such 
moments and in such persons in a more eminent 
way than at other moments and in other persons. 

If therefore reverence for the founder of our 
religion designates him as ' Son of God,' no se- 
rious objection to the essential thought which is 
expressed . by this term is, in view of the preced- 
ing paragraph, tenable ; it is even without doubt 
legitimate to regard the relation in which he stood 
to God, as absolutely unique not only as to degree 
but also as to its essential quality. 

But no one can discover an adequate expression 
for that which would exactly correspond to the con- 
notation of such a term (diesen Intentionen). Since 
then Christ after all cannot be ' God's Son ' in the 
literal sense, but the true meaning of this figura- 
tive expression admits of no authentic interpreta- 
tion whatever, this entire proposition is not at 
all adapted for the formation of a speculative 
dogma ; and he who assents to it in fact expresses 
merely his conviction of the unique value which 
Christ has for him, and which Christ's relation to 
God has for humanity, without however being able 
precisely to define either of them. 



SATISFACTION AND REDEMPTION. 151 

§ 90. He who in an unprejudiced way allows 
the teaching of Christ and the history of Christ's 
life to influence his mind, without analyzing this 
impression, may be convinced that an infinitely 
valuable and unique act has occurred here on earth 
for the salvation of humanity. But the attempts 
to settle speculatively the content and value of 
this fact, do not as a whole lead to the end 
designed. 

It is impossible to speak of God's honor as re- 
ceiving ' satisfaction ' through the sacrificial death 
of a single person, for the injury done it by the 
sin of man. For such a view, aside from its some- 
what crude conception of God, is based upon the 
altogether impossible conception of a solidaric 
unity of the human race and of the possibility 
of a transfer of its guilt and obligation to a single 
representative. 

The more humane ideas of a ' Reconciliation ' or 
a - Redemption ' — at least the latter of them — 
leave it undetermined from whom it is, precisely, 
that humanity beholds itself delivered by this 
ransom. It could not well be God, but must 
rather be the order of natural law, which has 
connected sin with our finiteness and condemna- 
tion with our sin. 

Now we know that we are redeemed neither 



152 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

from physical evils nor from the possibility of sin. 
The only thing left therefore as the practically 
effective result of redemption is the content of a 
faith revealed and proffered to us, which redeems 
us from the distress and wretchedness of Creation, 
in so far as it teaches us to regard all evil as only 
a divine trial ; teaches us, however, to regard the 
whole of the earthly life, not to be sure as insig- 
nificant, nor yet as an irrevocable finality, but as a 
state of preparation, for the errors of which there 
is in the divine grace a redemption which we are 
not in the least able speculatively to define. 

All further speculations which attach themselves 
to this subject — as, for example, about the origin 
of sin and about its consequences — are perfectly 
useless as regards the religious life. 

§ 91. Even the third division of such specula- 
tions, which we may sum up as Eschatology, 
does not admit of being cultivated speculatively. 
The earthly future of the human race as well as 
the nature of our immortality and of the retri- 
bution which the final judgment will bring, are 
entirely beyond the reach of any concrete por- 
trayal. And in this connection the Humanism 
of modern times has in fact become entirely dis- 
used to such concrete representations, and has be- 



NECESSITY FOR A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY. 1 53 

come satisfied, as it must be, with maintaining 
the general faith in continued existence and in 
a constant process of perfection, as well as in a 
retribution ; and in just this way it has shown 
that for a truly religious life there is really no 
necessity whatever for that vast sum of knowl- 
edges which dogmatics, with much liability to 
misunderstanding, assumes as necessary to such a 
life. 

§ 92. Mention was previously made of the value 
attaching to the necessity that one shall not stand 
alone in his religious convictions. The value of 
this is the more enhanced on account of the fact 
that the content of these very convictions them- 
selves consists in faith in an uninterrupted union 
of men with each other and with God, into which 
it is possible for every one to enter by his own 
free choice. 

If we call this communion the invisible Church, 
then the visible Church, on the other hand, is 
certainly nothing more than a human institution 
of the company of believers : partly for fellowship 
in the worship of God, partly for the regulation 
of its earthly affairs in agreement with the de- 
mands of its faith. But every pretension which 



154 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

such visible Church might advance, not merely to 
teach the way to eternal salvation and to guide 
to it, but to open and to shut this way by virtue 
of its own power, is quite unfounded. As for the 
rest, the Church, like every other institution, must 
not fall into a condition of opposition to the regu- 
lations of the State ; although we cannot regard it 
as a happy expression to say that the Church 
must be subjected to these regulations in anything 
else but external matters of an altogether indiffer- 
ent character. On the contrary, it is the evil of 
the present time — and of course has its historic 
conditions — that the State as such is compelled 
to exist without any religious foundation and that 
it believes it has no need of any. 

But the complete unity of the State in religious 
matters also, would of course presuppose that two 
hostile parties should return to modesty ; — namely, 
that theological learning on the one side, and irre- 
ligious natural science on the other, should not 
assert that they have exact knowledge about so 
very much which they neither do know nor can 
know; it would therefore presuppose that, in the 
recognition of divine mysteries which are left to 
the interpretation of each individual believing mind, 
and of general ethical precepts concerning the 



THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 1 55 

meaning of which moreover there exists no con- 
troversy, the religious life may unfold itself in 
accordance with the motto : In necessariis imitas, 
in dubiis libertas. in omnibus caritas. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, the One Being, 32 f. ; relation of Things to, 33 f. ; Determinations 
of, 35 f. ; Spinoza's view of, 38 ; as personal Spirit, 43 f., 55 f. ( 68 ; and 
therefore conscious, 66 f. ; none besides God, 83 f. ; course of the world 
related to, 114 f. 

Action, between elements, 25 f. ; of Things on each other, 30 f. 

Argument, the Ontological, 8 f. ; the Cosmological, 10 f. ; the Teleological. 

Attributes, of God, 45 f. 



Being, God as the Most Perfect, 9 f . ; as the necessary, 10 f. ; and uncon- 
ditioned, 13 f., 55 f. ; intelligent, 21 ; the Absolute, 32 f. ; Unity of, 52 f. 
Blessedness, as the supreme end, 118 f. 



C. 

Christ, as Son of God, 150 f. ; relation to humanity, 150. 

Churcb, visible and invisible, 153 ; relation of, to State, 153. 

Conscience, function of, 129 f. ; development of, 131 f. 

Consciousness, belongs to Personality, 56 f. ; conception of, 56; origin of, 

57 f. ; involves self-identical Ego, 59 f., 62 ; feeling necessary to, 60 f. 
Contingent, events, as, 10 f. 
Creation, conception of, 71 f. ; Divine will in, 73 f. ; not necessarily deed, 

74 f., 79 f. ; " out of Nothing," 79 ; no process of, 79 f. 



D. 

Design, conscious in Nature, 17 f. 

Development, not creation, 71 f., 79. 

Dogmas, necessity of, 143 f. ; subscription to, 145 ; limits of, 147. 

Dualism, in philosophy, 39; as to origin of evil, 124. 



1 60 INDEX. 



E. 

Ego, unites elements, 30; idea of, 59 f., 63, 64; correlative to non-ego, 62 f. 
End, conformity to an, 16 f., 18 f. ; in the world's history, inf., 114; the 

supreme, 115 f., 118. 
Eschatology, not a matter for speculation, 152. 

Ethics, relation of, to the idea of value, 117; and of expediency, 132 f. 
Evil, apologies for, 121 f. ; origin of, 124, 126. 



F. 

Faith, as organ of Religion, 1 f. 
Eall, conception of a, 126 f. 
Fanaticism, origin of, 144. 

Feeling, groups of the religious, sf. ; necessary to self-consciousness, 60 f. 
Fichte, on " world-stuff," 97. 

Force, conception of, in Nature, 17^ 20 f . ; blind and unconscious, 40. 
Freedom, a condition of Government, 99; not speculatively defensible, 
100 f., 102, 106; objections to, 103. 



G. 

God, proof of his existence, 8 f . ; ontological argument for, 8 f . ; cosmo- 
logical argument for, 10 f . ; as unconditioned, 13 f. ; teleological argu- 
ment for, 15 f., 22 f., 24 f. ; as Supreme Intelligence, 21 ; Unity of, 45 f. ; 
Unchangeableness of, 46 f., 52 f. ; Omnipresence of, 47 f. ; Omnipotence 
of, 49 f., 86 f., 88 ; Eternity of, 51 f. ; Personality of, 55 f., 68 f. ; as Cre- 
ator, 70, 79; productive will of, 73 f., 79 ft, 139; no Principle antecedent 
to, 82, 90; relation of truth to, 84 f., 91 f. ; government of, 95 f. 

Good, idea of the highest, 122, 133, 141; as compatible with Evil, 124; rela- 
tion to the Divine Will, 138 f. 

Government, the Divine, 95 f.; conditions of, 98 f., 106; distinguished 
from Preservation, 107 ; by intervention, 109 f. 

I. 

Intelligence, in Nature, 21 ; inhering in Things, 24 f. 



Law, not above Things, 83 ; nor antecedent to God, 83 f., 88 f. 
Leibnitz, best possible world of, 123. 



INDEX. l6l 



M. 

Materialism, its account of self-consciousness, 57. 

Matter, contrasted with Spirit, 35 f., 37, 38. 

Metaphysic, Postulates derived from, 30 f., 52. 

Miracle, the conception of, 107 f. ; abstract conceivableness of, 108 f. 

extent not speculatively determined, nof. 
Mysticism, origin of, 143. 



N. 

Nature, elements and forces of, 18 f. ; blind course of, 21 f., 47. 
Necessary, conception of the, 10, 12 f. 



Omnipotence, meaning of the Divine, 49, 86f.,88; never in the abstract, 

87 f. ; modus agendi of, 122. 
Ought, idea of the, 135 f. 



P. 

Pantheism, 38. 

Personality, conception of, 55 f. ; of the Absolute, 55, 68 ; a self-conscious 

ego, 59 f., 62 f., 64 ; perfect only when infinite 68 f. 
Pessimism, 128. 

Philosophy, legitimate place of, 1 f. 
Power, conception of, 87 f. 

Preservation, of the World, 81 f., 92 f. ; as new creation, 92 f. 
Principle, the absolute, 35; and the supreme, 149. 
Providence, in organism, 22 f. 



Eeason, organ of Religion, 1 f. ; necessarily self-conscious, 39 f. 

Redemption, idea of, 131 f. 

Religion, as related to Reason, if., 6; and scientific cognition, 4f. ; 
involves experience, 5 ; feelings of, 5 f. ; relation to morals, 129 f. ; first 
principles of, 137 ; the Christian, 140 ; the communion of, 145. 

Rigorism, an ethical, 116 f. 



l62 INDEX. 



S. 

Schelling, 38. 

Science, nature of its cognitions, 4. 

Sensations, origin of, 36. 

Sin, origin of, in a Fall, 126 f. 

Spinoza, 38. 

Spirit, contrasted with Matter, 35 f., 38; always self-conscious, 39, 56 f . ; 

and personal, 41 f. ; the Infinite, 66; finite spirits, 67 f., 96. 
Spiritualism, the philosophical, 39. 
Stoicism, its wise man, 136. 



Theology, relation to philosophy, 148. 

Things, properties of, 16 f . ; as intelligent, 24 f. ; homogeneous and con- 
nected, 29 f., 31 ; influence of, on each other, 30 f. ; as modifications of 
the Absolute, 32 f., 34, 67; spiritual susceptibility of, 37; cannot have 
unity, 53 ; as subject to law, 83. 

Time, not self-subsisting form, 51 f. 

Trinity, doctrine of, 149. 

Truth, as related to God, 84 f., 91 f. 



U. 



Unconditioned, conception of the, 13 f. 
Universe, origin of, 17 f., 28; elements of, 27 f., 28 f. 



W. 

Will, the Divine in creation, 73 f. ; the human, 75, 104 ; modus agendi 

unknown, jj ; the free, 104 f. 
World, relation of, to God, 70, 81, 94, 95. 



OUTLINES OF METAPHYSIC. 



The dictated portions of the latest Lectures of HERMANN LOTZE (at 
Gottingen and Berlin). Translated and Edited by GEORGE T. LADD, 
Professor of Philosophy in Yale College. 



These outlines were formulated by Lotze himself, recorded 
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35 



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